As I wrote earlier, Sevco’s criminal chairman moved backwards last night over reports that he views the rest of Scottish football with contempt.
We know he’s lying when he says he doesn’t, and not only because lying is what comes naturally to Dodgy Dave King.
We know he’s lying because that contempt expresses itself in more than just his words.
Both Hearts and Aberdeen find themselves under pressure over players contracted to their clubs; in the case of Hearts it’s Jamie Walker. If they sell him to Sevco then it will be impossible not to conclude that the club is continuing to pay for the Ibrox club’s contempt for Financial Fair Play. They’ve already lost a European place because of it. If they lose their best young player that will be more than their fans should expect to take.
Yet the offers Sevco have made for the player so far reveal the total disregard in which King holds their club. Hearts could not be clearer in what their value of the player is; King is not interested in that. His club has purchased a series of players from places where the clubs aren’t aware of Sevco’s negotiating standard or their propensity to try and slip out of their responsibilities. UK clubs know better. They aren’t playing Sevco’s game.
And their method is well-established, with a ridiculous opening bid, a strategic leak to the press and then the ramping up of pressure on club and player both. Hearts are offended by the offer, and retaliated by telling the press what their actual valuation of the player is.
Sevco is still determined to twist their arm.
It would be ridiculous if Hearts cracked.
Aberdeen most definitely won’t. Sevco’s offer of a mere £300,000 for McLean is utterly contemptible.
They are privately furious, and they should be.
It’s a naked offer to unsettle a player by offering a pittance for him.
That offer is absolutely unacceptable; Aberdeen have, in fact, said that they won’t entertain any offer from Ibrox. Sevco fans will furiously spew their hatred at the Pittodrie club over that, but the fact is they say they won’t entertain a bid from anywhere else either.
But Sevco and its board has a hell of a way of making clubs dig their heels in.
It’s a slightly different matter with Norwich; Dorrans is surplus to requirements over there and the idea of retaining his services is a non-starter for them. It’s a well-known fact that they would dearly love to get him off the wage bill.
The problem, which, as per usual, Sevco has made for itself is that all their newspaper boasting of having money has given the English club ideas.
I hear they are jacking the price up on Sevco in part because they can. It’s brinksmanship, and a Hell of game of it, but the Ibrox club has upped its bid a few times already and Norwich believe there’s more to be had out of them. Whatever they finally get for the player, they’ll regard it as a win.
In spite of that even they are piqued at the derisory nature of the bids so far.
They aren’t close to dealing yet.
Sevco have boasted today about how they’ve got “all their targets” so far.
Yeah, except for these three and the captain of Caixinha’s old club and the right back who went to France and the English midfielder they were priced out for.
Everyone apart from that.
But the contempt they’ve shown to their SPL rivals is atrocious.
Hearts may still crack over Walker if Sevco gets real with an offer; he’s in the final year of his deal but it’s hard to see how their fans could react well to Hearts selling him to a club which has already stolen a European slot from them and who’ll further be pissing all over FFP as they do it. Aberdeen will not budge, in part because they feel the insult even more acutely and also because they simply can’t afford to. Their fans would go insane.
King can swivel and pivot and try to squeak his way through press briefings where he claims to have the utmost respect for the rest of the game here, but he and his board make a mockery of that assertion every chance they get. His comments of the weekend, where he basically wrote off every club in the land, were about as honest as he’s ever been about how other clubs are viewed from the inside of Ibrox.
The boards at Pittodrie and Tynecastle, indeed every board across the land, would be mugs if they forgot it.