Dave King gave one of his outlandish press tours the other day, hand-picking his audience for maximum effect. As usual, however, his own words torpedoed any chance whatsoever of him being taken seriously, except in the usual circles, the most stone stupid elements amongst his own support. They, and the toadies of the press, are the only people who don’t seem to realise that this guy is right out of Central Casting for clowns.
Only a clown could claim that a 5-1 defeat at home was a positive result.
Apparently the club learned a lot from it. They learned what was needed. Yeah, the problem is that what was needed was yet another change of manager, and instead they gave him the season ticket money to spend. Anyone who watched that game that day – which is all of us, and probably a few dozen times since – knows that the final score flattered them. It could have been ten. It could have been more.
I’ve never seen such a one sided game against an Ibrox club in my life.
A better manager than Caixinha would have learned something from the Scottish Cup semi-final. It had taken place only six days earlier. They didn’t lay a glove on us at Hampden. I expected them to give us a blood and thunder performance at Ibrox; instead, incredibly, they went backwards. The same happened against Aberdeen; they won at Pittodrie and then lost at home, the first time Aberdeen had won at that ground in 26 years.
Caixinha is a disastrous appointment.
You can see it. You can see it in the fragmented nature of their performances. In the tactical cluelessness. In his attitude to the media. In the divisions in the dressing room. In the type of players he’s brought to the club. We’ll get a technicolour demonstration of that very soon, I’m sure.
King can dodge that bullet; he took no responsibility for appointing this guy.
He didn’t even meet him before the deal was signed. That’s a measure of King’s own cluelessness, his own lack of engagement, his own desire not be involved in the day-to-day running of the club he is, tonight, playing the big hero for.
He has no idea whether Caixinha is a good boss or not.
I suspect he doesn’t particularly care.
It’s not his money that’s tied up in this farce.
His claims on the Takeover Panel were equally risible.
It won’t affect the club, he says, as Puma heads for the hills, as Ashley bolts for the exit, throwing his shares on the table and all.
King says he is angry with the decision and will appeal it; is he the last guy in the room to realise that he’s had the appeal, and lost it? Or is he simply lying, knowing that some in his audience are too gullible to see through it? Because although the media printed his absolute pish that he intends to keep on fighting anybody who’s looked into this knows it’s over, that he was found guilty, lost an appeal and then given a legally binding instruction which he chose to ignore.
Now all that remains are the consequences.
And they will fall on the club if he is still chairman when the hammer drops.
It cannot be avoided.
Which brings me to the share issue he’s talked about now that Ashley is gone.
If he gets the black spot from the City of London that’s all over with. Because they will not entertain any such scheme whilst he is at the head of it. That has long term consequences for everyone involved at Ibrox, but one consolation for their fans, in particular those from Club 1872, is that a share issue would have devastated the value of their own holdings … they are safe as long as King is given the regulatory slap most of us wholly expect.
In addition, of course, we have the claim that the gap between the clubs isn’t terribly big, that it ought to be bigger. It is so ridiculous that a couple of the newspapers openly mocked it on their back pages. Leigh Griffiths described it as “ludicrous.” He rightly surmised that Sevco fans will not be happy hearing such utter tripe out of King’s mouth. In the next few days I expect other figures associated with Celtic to openly mock this claim in the most brutal language.
Tonight Sevco fans are celebrating chasing a genuine global businessman from their club, the one this convicted fraudster and serial liar sits at the helm of.
He has already expressed his disdain for coming to Scotland to conduct business, but couldn’t wait to sit in front of his sycophantic media buddies and take the plaudits of recent days, but his every utterance was an embarrassment.
His every claim has to be scrutinised in the context of who he is and what his past association with the truth is; about the same as mine is with the Louden Tavern.
Every day King spends as chairman of Sevco endangers their existence; I cannot put it in more blunt language.
The people on the board who are carrying the water to feed this guy’s ego and the rampant arrogance of the club’s fans are fools for doing it one minute longer, or with another penny of their own cash. Not that it matters, because like anyone else of a psychopathic bent, King’s internal circuitry has an inbuilt self-destruct mechanism wired in.
This guy keeps on pushing until someone pushes back.
His entire life thus far has been characterised by picking fights with those with more power, then retreating under cover of PR spin. It’s even true of his relationship with Murray, who royally screwed him and then ignored him whilst on the Ibrox board; he essentially took King’s money and then told him to sit in the corner like a wee boy and keep his mouth shut. His threats to sue for being “duped” came to nothing, as one would expect.
The thing with King is that he doesn’t actually know all that.
Like Trump, who he reminds me of more and more, he’s convinced himself, I think, that everything that comes out of his mouth is true.
It was George Orwell who said, “A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”
I have never seen a better example of that than in the man who sits in the Sevco chairman’s seat.
And he is most certainly lying, almost all of the time.