Kris Boyd wrote one of his more ridiculous columns this weekend.
Before we go any further, let’s clarify what that means. Every Kris Boyd column is ridiculous. The fact he’s got a column at all is ridiculous. When people mourn the state of the mainstream media they only have to look at Boyd, Barry Ferguson and the procession of bigots from the Sevco blogs who troop through the offices of the Daily Record to see why.
When I say his column was ridiculous I mean that it was barmy even by his own embarrassing standards. It soared to new heights of absurdity. It plumbed new depths of wishful thinking and grieving for the Grand Old Days of Yore.
This column is all about the Greatness of David Murray.
It opens with this line, which I predict will soon enough become infamous:
“He swore in court to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth …”
Uhuh. I’m trying to follow the law as it relates to commentary on the Whyte trial, so I’ll refrain from going into too much detail on what I think of his testimony … but that particularly line strikes the funny bone hard, for reasons I think will become apparent.
Boyd thinks the fans need to ask themselves if they’d take Murray back as chairman and owner. In his words, “the man thousands of them blame for causing all the problems could just be the man to make them go away.”
That, too, makes me laugh.
Boyd’s contention is that Murray will not like what’s happening at Ibrox and has the wherewithal to do something about it. He bases this on the discredited joker’s presence on the UK Rich List this year, with an “estimated worth” of £150 million.
I never cease to be amazed by how dumb some people are as to precisely what that means. It does not mean, for example, that Murray has £150 million sitting in the bank. One third of the money is tied up in “assets worth £51million”, for example, which means that some insurer has given them a value of such-and-such. But if Murray were to start selling those assets on the open market he would find that the value of them would drop, perhaps even precipitously.
To run a football club, someone needs what’s known as “liquid assets”; that is, something that can very swiftly be turned into what you and I would call “cold hard cash.” Bonds. MMI’s. Precious metals, whose values are not subject to wild fluctuations.
Covert them to money.
You need tons of it. Tens of millions, available on tap.
Most of Murray’s remaining “wealth” will be tied up in the share price, and I guarantee he’s carrying a significant amount of bank debt on top of it all. His assets are most probably heavily securitised against that. For all the good that would do Sevco, he might as well have all it tied up in moonrocks.
It would be better than these ridiculous moonbeams.
And here’s a moonbeam and a half …
“Whatever you think about Murray, his actions always spoke louder than his words. His dream as chairman was to see the club win a European trophy and he was a whisker away from that happening …”
A whisker away from a European trophy. Sweet Jesus.
You get bored hearing this stuff, this dire, dire, nonsense.
There were two occasions which their fans like to remind you of; the so called “90 minutes from the European Cup final” bollocks they sometimes talk in relation to the 1992-93 competition when in order to get there they pretty much needed to win on the final day of the Groups and for Marseille to drop points. Neither of those things happened. Rangers 0-0 draw at home to CSKA Moscow ended all hope; in order to go through without depending on Marseille slipping up they had required a win where they scored eight goals more than the French … in a competition where they managed 7 group stage goals in total.
The other occasion was Manchester.
They were thoroughly outplayed on the night and their fans capped it off with a good old fashioned riot.
“I don’t know a Rangers supporter who would change anything if they could turn the clock back. The success they lived through in the 90s will stay with them until their dying day.”
I know a lot of Sevco supporters who would definitely turn the clock back. They might still have a club called Rangers to follow. It will certainly stay with them until their dying day, mostly because it ushered in the club’s own.
Here’s the best bit.
“I genuinely think Murray would love nothing more than to return to (Ibrox) and set about proving people wrong.”
I can guess how Murray feels about the prospect, but I can say with certainty that it would fill me with great delight if he were to uproot from the Edinburgh base he’s been hiding in since 2012 and try it. But he won’t, because this time there’s no bank standing behind him willing to finance all this. He would have to spend his own money on it, and for all the hype that surrounds him he’s never been willing to do that.
Rangers “success” was built on two things; bank debt and tax fraud. David Murray implemented those two policies. It does not make him a genius. In fact, he’s a pretty bog-standard modern era vulture capitalist, risking very little of his own money.
Here’s how Boyd chooses to end his piece, and please, no laughing.
“It’s financial backing the club needs. Dare I say it, it’s a chairman willing to spend a tenner for every fiver Celtic take out of their pocket.”
I don’t think I have to tell you the million ways that this is a ridiculous statement. Boyd has always struck me as one of those guys with an IQ barely hitting room temperature, but this is daft even by his own standards of dumb. The thing is, he’s not the only person who still thinks this way, who thinks the answer to every problem at Ibrox is “spend spend spend.”
But he is the only one who thinks Murray – who above all is not an idiot – would be daft enough to take on this toxic institution again, at a time when Celtic is running on full, well financed, sustainably, and at the height of our powers.
His giant ego was never able to cope with being second. He would have to get used to a hell of a lot of that, if he popped his head above the parapet now.