I predict that one of the things that’s going to take your breath away over the next couple of days will be the media’s savage rewriting of history in relation to Dodgy Dave King. This could not be better symbolised than by the broadsheet writers who are first out of the starting gate in the quest to bury him with the Sevco fans.
First is Matthew Lindsay. Another is Martin Hannan. And then there is Graham Spiers. He is perhaps the worst of the lot of them, not because he’s suddenly singing a brand new song but because right from the start he was of a mind that King was not a fit and proper person to be in charge of a Scottish club … but thought the SFA must pass him anyway because the Ibrox club needed money and he was the only one who appeared to have it.
This is indicative of the attitude through much of the media; they know exactly who this guy is, and they always did. To pretend otherwise, to pretend to have just learned that King is a serial liar, a cheat, a fraudster, a huckster, a chancer, is to deny gravity. This was all readily apparent, and has been for the better part of his so-called career.
Dave King is a criminal. He has a criminal mentality. He also has several traits one would normally associate with someone with anti-social personality disorder; the compulsive, almost reflexive, lying is part of that syndrome. Like an adrenaline junkie he appears to have a need to take greater and greater risks; this is another red flag trait of the sociopath. Examine the email exchange between King and Letham, where his concert party buddy practically begs him not to acquire more than 10% of the clubs shares because to do otherwise would place them in exactly the jeopardy they presently find themselves. King ignored it and bought 14%.
Whether the media ignored this and what it meant at the time I neither know nor care, but I do know that everything that has transpired is partly their fault for the way they handled it and led the cheers as he returned to the ground where he last sat on the board of Rangers as it was heading for the rocks. During that time he made not one positive contribution to the club, and those who argue that he has benefited them this time are, frankly, full of it.
Sevco is in a more precarious position than before Dave King arrived on the scene. His so-called “leadership” has resulted in waves of disaster hitting them from all sides. Come January he will have been there for three years. He has sacked four managers in that time; McDowell, McCall, Warburton and Caixinha. Whilst Lindsay claims the club’s financial position has “stabilised” this is contemptible nonsense when they are paying bills with soft loans from directors.
It is equally nonsensical to say he has successfully renegotiated deals with Ashley and co. We now know he paid £3 million to avoid going to court, and that part of the settlement involved some changes to the retail agreement, but we have no idea how deep that rabbit hole goes or where it ends up. His relationship with the club’s other commercial partners is diabolical. Their PR is not second rate as much as fourth rate, with inflammatory statements which embarrass all involved a constant all through that time.
He has also not “invested” anywhere near the sums people expected or tell themselves he has. King has led these people a merry dance, but some of us said what he was and what he would do right from the start and it shames the media here to see them scrambling now, playing catch up, when they criticised us for our views at the start.
There is no apology. No humility. They refuse to acknowledge that they got this badly, badly wrong and even now will not see that Sevco is in worse shape than ever. So is the credibility of our press and of Scottish football itself, and I blame them for that as much as King and as much as those who masquerade as our “governing bodies.”
They have a lot to answer for here, and whilst I’ll cover that in another piece I want to say now only that the SFA itself is a gutless shower who would never have dared give King the green light if they thought it would raise a ruckus. They only did so when it was clear that the media would not do so, that they would roll over and assume their normal role; cheerleaders for whoever promised to return Ibrox to the era of “spend spend spend.”
The SFA used to be afraid of the media, but why should they be? The media has even less bottle than they do and is so used to be fed from the hand that they’ve forgotten how to go out and dig for their keep. King casts a dark shadow over more than Ibrox; he is the poster boy for what the entire media industry in Scotland has become.
Yesterday brought shame to the lot of them. This morning they have compounded it with their attempt to rewrite the history of what they did here. He is exactly where they wanted him, and where acres of positive press put him.
This disgrace belongs to them too. How dare they try to shake it off.