Today, murmurs of discontent in the west. Today, tales of revenge and one-upsmanship.
I never cease to be thrilled by them.
A couple of the other blogs have reported that Sevco’s fan organisation, Club 1872, has run into some financial difficulties.
There’s a shock, eah?
On top of that, Phil reports that Stewart Robertson has been taking advantage of his “new position” as the de-facto most important figure on the club’s “football board” to oppose the wishes of Chairman Dave himself.
This all leads up to more trouble for the South Africa tax cheat.
It’s trouble he really doesn’t need at this moment in time, but with it there’s a message even he ought to heed; you can fool some of Peepul some of the time and most of the Peepul most of the time but you can’t fool all of the Peepul all of the time and hope to get away with it.
I believe Sevco fans are conditioned to be some of the most accepting, not to say gullible, in all of the country. But the majority of them are just like us; they don’t trust authority 100% of the way. They don’t simply accept everything they hear out of Ibrox, and their loyalty is only good up to a point, and that’s the point where they think they’re being messed about.
King knew this when he arrived. He arrived on the back of it. He roused the mob, got them to boycott the merchandise and threaten to boycott the club itself. He knows they are fickle and can be swayed. But this is so like King; he thinks he commands some special power, that only he can move these masses to action or inaction. He believes he casts some spell over them, that they do as he says, and that they are forever putty in his hands.
And he’s wrong, of course. About a lot of things.
Club 1872 was created out of Rangers First. It had a tremendous start as a fund-raising movement, designed to acquire shares on behalf of the fans. It was an organisation which was set up to secure an ownership stake in the club. It is easy to see why that was such a success in the beginning. Because the sentiment is right, the idea is good, the cause is noble. Yet it’s easy to get a scheme like that off to a good start … sustaining that momentum is the hard part.
There was always going to be a sizeable drop-off in subscriptions and donations. That’s par for the course for any such organisation. But if the guys have this right it’s not a drop-off as much as it’s a dive off a sheer cliff-face. The numbers have crashed; two thirds of their subscription s have dried up since the organisation morphed into Club 1872 and that is most definitely not normal. It is a sign of trouble in the wind, the kind that wrecks these initiatives.
King is part of the problem here. A lot of Sevco fans know that he has been using Club 1872’s cash reserves as a credit card for the club. Money has been spent on club projects without the people who’ve subscribed having a say in it. The numbers are falling because those who signed up didn’t sign up for that. They didn’t sign up so that their money could plug the gaps that Dave King’s own was supposed to fill.
I applaud them for taking stock and no longer being treated like mugs.
The resignations of three fan reps shows that things are bad there, and that King’s people have their claws in the fan groups to an unhealthy extent, and whilst removing the bad apples might not be possible, a lot of those who were open to actually putting their cash in are thinking again.
Between now and the end of the season, King will blow a lot more smoke in their direction, over stuff like the promises to the manager. He has said there will be money to spend but that’s vague and wishy-washy and empty of anything but hype. How much will there be? Will the manager need to sell in order to buy? These are important questions, and King isn’t giving them answers as much as asking them to take him on blind faith.
But why should they, when this man is a notorious liar?
King has forgotten that these people do have power, the sort that can oust boards. They can choose not to subscribe to the fan payment scheme. They can choose to sit on their wallets until they have concrete answers to the difficult questions he wants to avoid.
Not all of them will.
But enough of them might to make the tight financial squeeze at the club even worse.
How much until the whole thing bursts? Even with a full uptake of tickets he has about as much wiggle room as a 20 stone man trying on jeans with a size 40 waist. Even if he manages to get into them, he can forget about doing the Hokey-Cokey.
Likewise, with his decision to shift Stewart Robertson to the “football board” and away from the big table where the big decisions are made. According to Phil, King had promised the “third coach” job to John “Der Bomber” Brown, but King forgot that in laying out the new structure for the world’s edification, that decision had been placed firmly in the purview of Robertson’s board, and he acted in accordance with that, to over-rule King’s wishes and give the job to someone who was not only eminently more qualified but who, as I said yesterday, isn’t burdened by all that West of Scotland “cultural” garbage.
It’s a wise decision and should fire another warning shot across the bow of the absentee chairman, who really does believe that he can keep his eyes everywhere, on everyone, and that all involved will simply play the roles he’s assigned to them.
It’s not going to happen.
People are onto this guy now.
Tomorrow he will have to announce this share offer.
People inside and outside Ibrox are waiting, and watching, and if he makes the wrong move they’ll make theirs.
He is in more trouble than he knows.
King might want to stick around – he clearly thinks he can brass neck it – but the trouble with being King Over the Water is that the real stuff can’t be controlled from 4000 miles away. He has lied too many times. He has blown his own trumpet too loudly.
The backlash has begun.
This is not how it ends. This is just how the end starts.