Sevco’s pet journalists, ex-players and even some people inside the club, are talking about spending again. It’s always the same, and it never seems to end no matter what’s going on. At this point in the calendar it is especially reckless and galling.
Their latest six month accounts are due out within the next ten days and they are expected to be bad. The club may well show a small profit, but that will account for the first half of a season in which there is a tranche of season ticket money (they increased the prices, remember) and where the amazingly generous SFA draws have handed them home tie after home tie in the cup.
We can extrapolate many things from those numbers when they are published though; it’s likely they’ll paint a black picture of that part of the season we are in now, and reveal that they’ll make a loss again for this campaign.
The annual figures for 2016-17 are likely to be atrocious. Last year the media went to great pains to tell us they had reduced their annualised losses … an incredible thing to boast about. This year it’s expected that they’ll post more, in spite of a full Ibrox and season ticket prices which have gone up to make them the most expensive in the country.
Yet here they are, in the papers, saying they’ll spend.
There’s a word for continuing to spend money you don’t have whilst other clubs have to get by only what they earn; that word is cheating.
After a week where the big tax case was again in the news you have to marvel at a club that has learned nothing from what happened to its predecessor and continues on this ridiculous road.
It looks as if Sevco will do enough to secure third place in the league this season; that gives them access to Europe, if the SFA and UEFA wave them through.
But UEFA are highly unlikely to do that without asking to see some financial projections … and I’m dying to know just how Sevco are going to get those to them, especially when King is facing his problems with the Stock Market and the need to find an eight figure sum to satisfy them that he has the financial wherewithal to purchase shares in his offer, due at the end of April.
Nevertheless, if you are a club which plays by the rules, how do you explain that to your own fans? How do you explain to them that they might be denied European football next season because one club has decided it does not have to follow the same basic rules that everyone else has to?
When does the line get drawn?
There is talk that King won’t last the week; we’ll see whether that’s accurate.
But he’s not going to be able to post that money, not by legit means anyway, and so is in a lot of bother. If a chairman falls after the manager has just been appointed you’d be forgiven for thinking that the new boss would be looking over his shoulder; in fact, it might be the best thing to happen to Caixinha, in the short term at least. King never bothered to interview him anyway, and is yet to speak to him at all. His alibi is already secured against failure. Others on the board will carry the can.
Sevco’s financial position continues to be dire. Whatever promises this guy was made, there’s clearly more than one glib and shameless liar on the board. Yet for all that, I do think they’ll try to cobble together enough to let him sign a couple of players.
It’s almost season ticket time after all.
Directors providing soft loans is just another version of financial doping.
Haven’t we seen enough of that?
How much longer is Scottish football going to allow them to pull this stunt?
More on that one later.