Did you read that guff in the paper today, about Caixinha targeting twelve new players? My God, can the hacks really think we believe that? Who is that article intended to fool?
Oh wait … it’s intended to fool Sevco fans.
Well, okay, that might work.
In all seriousness, you have to be pretty thick to swallow that one. If he gets half of that they’ll need to expand the dressing room. How many are on the books at Ibrox? How many did Warburton sign? My God, you could put on a military re-enactment with the number of players they have at Ibrox right now. Just don’t hit Kenny Miller too hard if you don’t want a lot of crying to the media afterwards.
How are they going to get them all on the team bus? Go everywhere in a double decker? Do they come with heated seats and tinted windows?
Honestly, where’s the money for this coming from?
The fans? The board? Dodgy Dave’s money mattress?
I read an old Follow Follow thread last night, with suggestions ranging from having a bouncy castle on match-days at £2 a pop (Just get “the Big House” guy to lie on the pitch at half time) to fans entering a contest where they race from the goal-line to the halfway line for a prize … a one year deal maybe. It’s more than a lot of their first team players can manage.
These kind of fund-raising suggestions are by no means new.
My favourite was OrangeFest, which was the Order’s effort to spin stupidity and backwards social attitudes into money. They even created a corporate image for it; their “mascot” Diamond Dan. A cartoon character, dressed in an orange cape. And you thought there was no beating the story about how Rangers’ fundraising website got the address wrong, and directed people to a company that hired out clowns? The fun never stops with these Peepul.
The more hopeful of them expressed their view that other players will depart first. You have to really love their cutesy optimism at times; one speculated that it might well be alright as English clubs have plenty of money and surely some of them would take a punt (at £1 million each!) on dreck like Dodoo and Waghorn. Superb.
This is one of the downsides of the Survival Lie; all across this island, and the world, people were tuned in to that game on Saturday. Do you think managers and chairmen will be waiting, cheque books poised, for the list of players Pedro deems “surplus to requirements”?
It’s like that fantastic Only Fools and Horses scene where Del is inventorying his spare room, which is all stuff he salvaged from a garage which got broken into. As he goes through it, item by item, watched by an increasingly frustrated Raquel – who wants the room for the baby that is due to drop any day – he assures her he can sell everything in there.
But this is the stuff the burglars left behind …
“How do you expect people to buy it when the burglars wouldn’t take it away for free?” she asks.
They’re going to sell the dregs of this team?
To who?
Is there a football team, somewhere, owned and supported only by the blind? That’s their chance of punting these guys, their only chance.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s true nonetheless; they still haven’t twigged how big a mess this is, how tough a spot they are in. They’ve still not gotten their heads fully around what’s happened here. These guys are all on good wages.
None has less than a year left on his contract.
The management team has a three year deal … that’s little more than an act of sabotage.
I know they have to sell season tickets. The Daily Record will help out as much as it can.
But seriously, this just raises expectations sky high only to have them dashed.
There’s a thread on one of their fan sites about a rumour that the transfer budget – minus whatever they raise from sales; stop laughing there in the back – is a paltry £3 million, which is about the total we spent in the January window on a single player, the 19 year old kid we brought on for the last minute at Ibrox. I think that number is hugely optimistic.
Pedro says he does have some ideas. With no scouting network to speak of, it’s no surprise that he’s talking about using his own “knowledge” of the game to find footballers. As he is unlikely to know many decent players in his native country having not worked there in years and will be hopelessly out of touch with events in Greece, it’s likely that his knowledge will be limited to those two nations he worked in most recently.
Mexico is a country where Celtic has a large presence. Hell, our linkup with Santos Laguna is one of the things Sevco fans found most troubling about his appointment, before recent events gave them more concrete reasons to be concerned. If there really are players there who would get work permits, would be able to settle in the UK, are within the price range of a Scottish club and would enhance the league I think we’d know about them.
Which leaves his last port of call.
The finest (affordable) players from the League of Qatar.
Exciting times to be a Sevco fan, right?