There was a time when a club playing out of Ibrox only had to report their interest in an SPL player to the media and their toadies in the press box would do the rest. There was a time when they had the cash to offer. There was a time when they had respect.
None of those things is true of the current Ibrox operation.
They are weak, and they are skint. Even with the full-throated backing of the press, other SPL clubs no longer simply get in line. Hibs proved it the year before last when they refused point blank to sell them Scott Allan, after one of the most reprehensible media onslaughts I’ve ever seen.
This year Sevco did their level best to unsettle players at Motherwell, Hearts and Aberdeen.
Not one single player from the top flight was sold to them in spite of that. They secured the services of Ryan Jack on a free, but in those circumstances Aberdeen were powerless to resist. When clubs have been able to, they’ve resisted and then some.
Hearts officials spoke to the media last night after the window closed in terms which radiated contempt for what the Ibrox club had tried on with them, over the transfer saga involving their young winger Jamie Walker. They described Sevco’s final offer as “derisory”, made up as it was of cash plus a player. They described the player – some say it was Dodoo, some say it was Holt – as “dead wood” they weren’t even remotely interested in.
It says a lot that a member of the Sevco first team is not considered good enough for the current squad at Hearts, doesn’t it? It says even more about the way they see other clubs that they would even attempt to fob them off with some reject from their own ranks.
Congratulations to Ann Budge for holding firm on this one, I actually didn’t expect her to.
Congrats also to Motherwell for getting their £400,000 for their centre back, and holding on to their striker Louis Moult. Both players were “on Pedro’s radar” as told to the press; both players had a price tag which the Ibrox club couldn’t meet.
The same applied to Kenny McLean at Aberdeen, who Sevco declared an interest in early in the window, through the media no less.
That one was slapped down so hard that Stewart Robertson’s ears must have been ringing. Aberdeen are believed to have quoted them a price – £2 million, the bulk of it upfront, if what I’ve heard is correct – and told them nothing short of it would even be entertained.
Sevco sulked off to look elsewhere, and as Aberdeen had made their intentions pretty plain only Chris Jack made any effort, and it was pretty half-hearted, to resurrect the story.
I had written earlier in the window about how Sevco were finding it increasingly difficult to get clubs in the UK to accept their pitiful “transfer terms” and so it proved. Until the final day, when Cardiff palmed a reserve off to them on loan, only Manchester City – who sent them an unblooded youth player – and Norwich bothered to take their call.
The one player they were able to sign on proper terms was Dorrans, and I was told by a good source that Norwich led Sevco a merry dance in a bid to get money out of them for a player they were ready to let go for free.
For all the humiliation they would have faced trying to get a player from England, that could have been explained away as their being unable to compete in a crazy marketplace. But their failure, even with media backing, to secure someone from Scotland?
That’s an embarrassment the Ibrox fan-base has never had to endure before.
They say it proves Scottish football hates them. Ha! They better get used to this, because almost every club in the SPL now has its act together when it comes to balancing the books and therefore not one of them is in a place where they have to sell players anymore, and especially not to upstart rivals. All of them can resist offers from England when the terms are not right, and players wailing for transfer can be ignored if they are on long term deals.
Sevco managed to unsettle Walker, but that, of course, was of no help to them when it came to actually trying to strike a last minute deal with Hearts. Budge was not going to roll over, especially when most of the press was hollering in her ear. She knows the game that’s being played here, she knows it all too well, and was not going to give in.
The ultimate irony of all this is that it’s Sevco itself who are wide open to approaches for their players, and unlike other clubs in the league they are in no position to turn those down.
There is a lot of talk in the media about how Morelos will “make them a fortune”, and it’s all rot.
Even if he turns out to be everything the hacks want him to be, the likelihood is that they’ll be lucky to get a seven figure sum for him.
One of the things their stupider supporters have overlooked when they talk about our Champions League cash and how we don’t seem to spend it is that it gives us limitless credibility when clubs come sniffing around our top stars … those clubs know full well that we do not have to sell people.
The books balance here. That’s why we can confidently predict that when Moussa goes the fee will completely obliterate the current Scottish transfer record … we can ask for market value because we are not desperately rattling the tin cup.
Sevco cannot hold out for good money, far less big money, even if they had a player who was likely to command a mid seven figures fee. Everyone knows this. If a decent offer comes in – and in the context of their financial position the money they got for Barrie McKay was decent enough – they’re not in a place where they can afford to say “no.” The idea that they will spark an auction for any of their dreck is equally laughable.
So whilst Hearts, Aberdeen, Hibs, Motherwell and the like can all hold out for the right offers, for terms they can accept, the same cannot be said for the Ibrox side, who are betting everything on a strategy that mirrors our own.
Let me explain just one of the holes in their grand theory though.
Victor Wanyama cost us £1 million to sign in the first place, and identifying him, and getting there before other clubs did, was only possible because we put in place a mother of a scouting system. They don’t have the scouting system. They don’t have the £1 million.
Virgil Van Dijk arrived at Celtic Park for £2.6 million.
That’s cash they couldn’t in their wildest dreams afford to spend on a football player.
Fraser Forster cost us £2 million plus whatever the loan fees were.
The loan fees alone would put the lights out at Ibrox, never to go back on.
And that’s just those three deals, the three that netted us huge fees in the past few years.
Dembele cost us £500,000 … he was the pick of the bunch, but we had to put together one Hell of a package to entice him north of the border.
Ki Sung-Yeung, who we sold for £6 million, cost us £2.1 million in the first place; he was one of the early proofs that our scouting system was starting to work.
Even Stuart Armstrong cost us the better part of £2 million; if we sell him for a huge profit it will be because we did the necessary work beforehand and got our hands on a player who wasn’t at his peak yet but whose potential was obvious.
The long and short of it is that the rewards come only at the end of major investment. You cannot simply buy lower league English dross or assorted diddies from around the world and hope to hit the jackpot, but there is, and there always has been, talent right here on our doorstep which, with the right polish, could net a very nice return.
The problem is, Sevco can’t afford them either.
Tough old world, isn’t it?