Here we go again.
The Daily Record is brilliant at putting words into other people’s mouths, and today it’s the turn of Arsene Wegner to get their gold star treatment. This is just a ridiculous subject to have to write about, so I’ll try to get through it as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Wegner was asked about Catalan independence and what would happen if Barcelona found themselves outside of the Spanish league and trying to get into the EPL. This is a wholly ludicrous question, of course, not simply hypothetical as much as pure nonsense, but Wegner, to his credit, tried to answer it logically.
“I don’t think it will go as far as that,” he said, playing it down gently when, in fact, he could have simply hammered home the point that the idea if frankly bonkers. In an effort to show just how bonkers he thought it was he added, “We have enough clubs here … if you want to go up to 24 … we have to welcome the Scottish before we go to the Spanish.”
And that was it. And based on this The Daily Record has the following headline: “Arsene Wenger says Celtic and Rangers should be invited into Premier League before Barcelona.”
As you can see, Wegner did no such thing. He made no such statement. He never once mentioned Celtic or the Ibrox NewCo which masquerades as Rangers. His reference to Scottish clubs didn’t name any. And it wasn’t an invite as much as a reflection of reality.
Because if such rules existed that allowed clubs to move from nation to nation Celtic, I’m sure, would already have explored those options. No such rules exist. Which is why Barcelona will not be leaving Spanish football anytime soon and why all this talk of an EPL 2 which some of the more hysterical journalists are pushing today won’t happen either.
The EPL talk is all nonsense and it has always been nonsense. We’re not wanted down there; Wegner wasn’t inviting us because there’s no invite to make. That league doesn’t need our club; it sure as Hell doesn’t need the Ibrox basket case. We’d be just another mouth to feed and in case it’s slipped people’s attention they can’t stuff their own quick enough to satisfy them. Barcelona sure as heck wouldn’t be invited; they’d dominate that league for a decade, not to mention the logistical and political nightmares that it would cause.
The nightmares would be no less if we were invited down. If the English leagues did the invites on merit then it would be us and Aberdeen going. To shoehorn Sevco in on the action would be an enormous insult to every other club in our league. The value of Celtic, on its own, is obvious. It is not quite so obvious what the value of Sevco on its own would be.
This is exactly why Wegner’s reference to “the Scottish” was turned into Celtic and Rangers by our lazy media. Because we are the only reason to invite them; the resumption of the media hyped “Glasgow derby”. We would be an asset to England on our own … no-one would invite them without us. Their only value is in that rivalry, clinging to our coat-tails.
Sevco will move towards a share issue at some point in the next few months; they have to. And if that share issue is to be something more than a flight of fancy they need something to sell more than just their ridiculous club … don’t be surprised to see talk of an Atlantic League or some other such garbage slipped out in their financial statement.
Their club is desperate for validation.
The media is desperate to find some for them.