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Sevco’s Board Seems Determined To Spend Its Way To Oblivion.

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Sevco are spending their way to an early grave.

There’s no other way to put that, no way to sugar coat it for their fans, no way to dress it up or write it in nicer language. They are buying tickets to oblivion, and not even bothering to fly second class, in the cheap seats. They are going First Class, drinking champagne, wolfing down caviar, jollying it up and enjoying the journey. And on some level they know where it will end.

They are gambling. They are doubling-down on the strategy that killed Rangers, hoping it saves them from the same fate. It is madness, of course, but their peculiar brand of it.

See, I’ve done this, and that’s why it’s easy to recognise.

Back in my second year at university, when the funds were running low and there wasn’t much work to be had in a small town like Stirling, I had an epiphany standing in the bookies one afternoon. Yes, I was in a bookies even though I was running low on cash.

It’s times like that when the bookies seems like the best idea. I’d had some wins that year already, and was getting pretty good. I had this idea that every week one game jumps out at you, and offers you a chance at quick cash. That’s exactly what happened that day. I picked up a coupon for the Champions League games and one of the odds screamed from the page at me; it was Rangers v Manchester United at Ibrox. United were evens to win.

Evens. “Oh wow,” I thought. “Free money.”

I had a couple of hundred quid left in the bank; I stuck almost every penny on Manchester United. So optimistic was I that the enthusiasm jumped to my flatmates, who decided to stick some cash of their own on the game. My mate Paul had £80 left; he stuck the lot on the United win. Was I nervous? Not when it was just my cash on the line, but I had convinced them to bet theirs. That somehow added to the pressure.

We went to the pub to watch the game, and I spent the rest of my money eating as well as I could; a nice three courser with mussels, steak and desert. Because why not? If I was right I was going to be able to pay my rent for another month. If I was wrong I’d be eating beans on toast and seriously sweating. But standing in that bookies I had already been seriously sweating, so the risk seemed like it was at least worth a shot.

The game that night passed like treacle running down a wall. It was messy and it went in a crawl. Manchester United won the game by a single Phil Neville goal … but it was close. Rangers hit the post. The Manchester United keeper had an inspired game. It was a cold sweat evening, and in no way justified my confidence of earlier that day.

One break of the ball and I’d have lost.

That made it more exhilirating than if it’d been over in the first ten minutes, and even sitting eating dinner that night was a heightened experience because there was such a lot riding on it.

But close, yes. Very close.

They are the margins between victory and defeat. Between glory and disaster. It seems inconceivable that a club which had risen from the ashes of a liquidated one could play a similar risk-all game with their future, but that’s where we are.

Desperate men are bad enough.

Desperate men who like to gamble … worse.

Does anyone doubt King is a gambler?

Not only is he, but he’s a reckless one who bets everything in single moments when the odds aren’t even particularly favourable. His gamble with the South African tax authorities was the biggest of his life thus far, the gamble to take on Ashley was ridiculous, the one to roll the dice on Warburton a big one but not all-in … and then there’s this one; betting on a Portuguese manager with no real record of achievement, who was coaching in Qatar, and giving him funds that Warburton and McCoist would have killed for.

Their club is skint. Where are they getting the money for such recklessness? The answer is that they aren’t. It’s not there. King has green-lit this, but this is a guy who might not be at the club for the long haul either, and so it’s nonsense, isn’t it?

What are they betting on? Taking the title from us? Even if they raise their game by 30% it won’t be enough if we produce another season on a par with the last one, even if it doesn’t end in an unbeaten run. We win the two home games against them and we need a draw at Ibrox and that’s their league challenge dead on its arse.

They can’t believe they have a squad – or the chance of building a squad – capable of making it to the Europa League Group stages can they? Even if they did, where’s the big money? We should know; we didn’t exactly fill the coffers the last two years we got there.

They’ve yet to get rid of a single player, in spite of their entire first team squad being available for transfer. So these guys are additional players on top of the dreck already there. And South American players, coming to Scotland? I get that all these guys want to play in Europe but they don’t all go to Portugal, Italy and Spain just for the money. There’s a reason they don’t come to Scotland and play out their match-days on soggy turf in the pouring rain.

And there’s a reason why other Scottish clubs don’t buy them.

This is a gamble and a half, with the future of their whole club, and their fans are gleeful about it although it makes exactly zero commercial sense at all. They were losing money before this; God alone knows how bad their final accounts for last season were. Who is carrying those losses? Dodgy Dave King sure as Hell isn’t. If their directors are funding this from their own pockets that’s insane, and it’s also as gross a violation of Financial Fair Play rules as you’re likely to see.

Which of course matters less in Scotland than it should.

Other clubs should be clamouring for the introduction of these regulations, domestically, in the off-season, but will they? Will they Hell is the answer I expect us to get. No-one’s interested in it, and I’ve stopped trying to give their fans a jolt. They don’t want to know.

Over on The Scottish Football Monitor the resident Hearts fans accept that Sevco are pissing all over their club, but they also say Hearts won’t challenge it because neither they nor St Johnstone believes there’s anything to be gained by it, when neither club feels ready for European football.

As if that’s the point. As if it’s not about fairness and a level playing field for all.

I can’t understand this reticence, or this attitude.

Nor do I understand Aberdeen, who have just signed Hayes up on an extended contract and are willing to part with him – allegedly their best player – for just shy of £1 million. Where is their ambition? Where is their intent? Why don’t any of these clubs want to be the biggest in the country bar one?

They are, all of them, just waiting for Sevco to take the place of Rangers.

It’s incredible.

But that would be a lot more likely to happen if Sevco itself wasn’t on such a suicidal trajectory.

Looking back on the crazy bet I laid that night I can’t believe I was so confident.

Would I have bet my degree on a season-long outcome?

Hell no, because that … that would have been bonkers.

That’s what they are doing, with the future of their entire club.

“Where’s the money coming from?” someone asked me on Facebook earlier in the week, before adding that they “don’t believe Sevco will ever go bust.”

And it’s simple, said I; if they keep spending like this it’s a matter of time.

It’s not a case of if it happens but when it happens. It is a certainty.

So few people believe that, somehow. As if you can keep on living that way and spending what you don’t have without it catching up to you. They say it will never happen at Sevco, will never be “allowed” to happen, as though money in the bank simply regenerates instead of having to be earned and put there, as if it never happened at Ibrox before.

How quickly the lessons of history are forgotten.

Because, of course, it did happen. And the board over there is doing its damndest to see that it happens again. They are on course for a colossal crash.

And in the meantime they have their feet up on the leather, sipping chilled wine, eating their mussels and enjoying the party. The hour draws late, but it’s one last celebration before the end. Even if they win – and the only win worth this risk is taking us down and that’s simply not going to happen, people – they still can’t sustain this kind of spending.

What’s the plan? What’s the strategy? Who says there is one?

The endgame is obvious though.

You bet everything on one roll of the dice you better get a six. You keep on betting everything on one roll of the dice you better walk away from the table when the going is good. This ends in only one way, the way it did before, with the For Sale sign hanging on those wrought metal gates.

Believe it. Those who won’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

They’re on “express elevator to Hell, going down.”

At least the ride will be interesting.

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