The Sunday Mail ran an article criticising Dave King today.
Yeah, I looked out the window to see if the sky was falling too. It’s not. It’s just that even Gordon Waddell can see the writing on the wall now. It’s just a shame it was written by our guys, who, as per usual, were about a light year ahead of the hacks in figuring stuff out.
Still, it’s amusing to see one of them finally get to the guts of it; King doesn’t give a stuff and it would be better for the club if he was levered out the door. That aside, the article is tame. It offers him the journalistic equivalent of a mild rebuke, but this is coming from a guy who is the journalistic equivalent of a writer for The Dandy.
I believe the idea that King should go is probably a view widely held inside Ibrox.
Aside from the view in the boardroom, which is likely to be almost wholly hostile to him by now, if those people have any sense of self preservation, I believe that many of the supporters woke up to it before the media started writing about it.
The hacks have been slow this week, even by their own dire standards.
How come it took until the weekend for these kind of pieces to appear? Some of us were on this the day the deadline expired, and many of us have already looked past it to potential consequences and even what life will look like after King.
Waddell doesn’t go that far; he thinks fans should step in and make King an offer for the shares.
What a joke.
Did he wake up this morning and think, “Hey, that’s a good idea …”
It falls on its arse in a number of places.
First, individual fans wouldn’t be able to do it on their own.
There would need to be one concerted effort by a supporter’s organisation. And there’s only one of those, Club 1872, who’s begging and pleading for King to explain himself shows that their current leadership offers no hope whatsoever of holding this guy to account.
The fans who sunk their money into what was originally Rangers First put it up with the purpose of purchasing shares, and those who keep sending their subs to Club 1872 are doing it for that very reason, so on the surface this is a good idea.
But to ask the fans to buy this guy out, and send him on his way with a profit and not so much as a backward glance … that’s ridiculous. What has King done to deserve that? How much more is that club going to leech out of its own supporters? They’ve already stuffed the pockets of guys like Charles Green, should they just keep on rewarding these charlatans into perpetuity?
Waddell also touches on the SFA passing King as a “fit and proper person”. He criticises them for that, and asks if perhaps they should have simply followed the rules and denied him the seat in the first place. This is odd; I watched a discussion between Waddell, Jackson and Michael Gannon which took place when the decision was made, and they seemed pretty comfortable with it at the time. There was no criticism of it whatsoever.
In fact, Waddell described the flap over the very idea of a “fit and proper person test” as something that was “laughable.”
His chance of mind is what is laughable.
In the same discussion Jackson argues that the “fit and proper person test is there to protect football clubs … does anyone seriously think Dave King is going in there to damage (the club)?” All three deploy the argument that the SFA was “in a no-win situation; someone was always going to be unhappy regardless of the result.”
This is why guys like Whyte, Green and King were able to do what they did.
First, the “fit and proper person” test is not there to protect clubs at all. It is there to protect the reputation of the sport. It is a regulatory requirement, which assures that football is not being used by a vehicle for organised crime activity like money laundering and fraud. Jackson is a halfwit if he really believes what it was he said that day.
He also said there were “mitigating circumstances.”
One day, perhaps, he’ll share with us what mitigating circumstances there were for a guy who pled guilty to 300 separate criminal offences and cut a deal to stay out of jail.
And secondly, the SFA was not in a “no-win situation” at all.
The SFA had a simple job to do; Dave King was a convicted crook who a judge had called a “glib and shameless liar.” He fell very clearly within the exclusion criteria for his offences, and for his role on the Craig Whyte board. Their responsibility to football was clear; to tell him to chase himself.
Someone is always upset when the rules are applied fairly.
You know who? Rule breakers.
This wasn’t a “please one, please all” situation; the hurt feelings of King cheerleaders shouldn’t have entered into this at all. The SFA had a job to do, to protect the integrity and standing of football in Scotland. That’s what the test is for.
Now, with King shaming the SFA for that decision and the revolution at Ibrox falling apart, they’ve offered belated, and half-hearted, criticism and put the onus on the ordinary fans – who they helped to mislead as to who this guy was and what he’s done – to take action that rightly belongs with his fellow directors and, finally, with the SFA itself.
Yes, it’s time the SFA reviewed the fit and proper person decision.
I can write that with a straight face because I’ve been saying it from the start.
I don’t know how these people can do it.
Club 1872 subscribers better watch out. I suspect Waddell’s “suggestion” isn’t a particularly original one.
Someone is preparing to put a hand in their pockets.