Tonight’s breaking news story is that Sevco has made an official approach to Hamilton about their midfielder Greg Docherty.
You would be forgiven for wondering if it’s a coincidence that this has surfaced on the same day as the administration rumours gather pace and King gets his final court-date.
I’d say you’d also be correct to draw that conclusion.
But on top of that there’s a larger issue at play here; this is the media, once again, doing what the Ibrox club wants, and conducting their transfer business for them. The story was broken by STV, who’s own journalists rebelled some years back when the company signed a digital broadcasting deal with an Ibrox club which they said could impact on their objectivity.
The company clearly has no worries on that score. They have none.
Their website started the ball rolling this evening with the Doherty story. I am not lying when I tell you their “article” is less long than some of the paragraphs in one of these articles. To save you having to seek the story out I’ll give you the basics. They are as follows;
Paragraph one:
“Rangers have made an official approach to Hamilton Academical to sign Greg Docherty, STV understands.”
Paragraph three:
“A bid has yet to (be) submitted for Docherty.”
I added the word (be) to paragraph three. I guess the Level 5 press release was typed in such a hurry they left that one out.
So, an official approach has been made … but no bid has been made.
So Sevco hasn’t even put an offer on the table, which is no great surprise as the money to do it just isn’t there.
Hamilton are the latest Scottish club to be trolled by this lot.
They did the same with Moult, without opening talks, and to Hearts over Jamie Walker without ever submitting a bid, they did it all through the summer with Kenny McLean at Aberdeen – who’s manager was the subject of a sustained campaign after Pedro was sacked, of course – and now it’s Hamilton’s turn.
And clubs deserve this because none of them has had the balls to decisively stamp on it from the off. Hamilton may be the exception to the case. We’ll see.
But targeting the Ibrox club itself for a blast of anger will not be enough.
It’s high time the media was made to pay for so openly shilling for the Sevco board. STV were the lead-off hitters here, but doubtless this story was sent to various outlets; The Daily Record had it online within six minutes of the story breaking.
Cut and paste job? Yes, it’s tempting to believe that, but I think they probably got the same email, from the same source.
Gordon Parks wrote their article on it; he quotes the players value at £600,000 … an absolute insult when you consider that Cardiff are in the frame. Docherty would fetch £1 million and the club should not settle for less.
As Sevco don’t have the first figure I very much doubt they’d be able to find the second.
Parks does not say no actual bid has been made, he simply leaves it open to interpretation. Typical of that rag to leave out the most important detail which is that “story” is an absolute non-story, all but for the fact they’re once again doing the club’s job.
Without Sevco having made a proper offer those two media operations are engaged in tapping tonight. If Hamilton wants to nip this stuff in the bud it ought to be dealing with that at the same time as it tells Sevco to get real and start talking money or take their “interest” elsewhere.