Amidst the euphoria over their “victory” at Celtic Park – a 0-0 draw in case you need reminding; a lot of folk need that – and their fevered expectations for the transfer window which include signings of £1 million or more and the sale of dreck for seven figure sums, there is disquiet in Sevconia over the story which Phil broke the other day regarding their academy and the surveyors who turned up and surprised the staff there.
This, says Phil, was King, King acting on his own, without the consent of the rest of the board, trying to raise money on the ground, presumably for the purposes of getting the Takeover Panel off his back and that of the club. Because whilst that case drags on, as has been pointed out here and elsewhere, Sevco cannot raise a bean from the sale of shares.
The story is interesting, and multi-layered.
The implications of it are pretty enormous.
First there’s the notion that King has now “gone rouge” and is doing whatever he pleases, using the club and all in it as his own personal chew-toy. That can’t conceivably be good news for anyone involved. It’s a disaster, in fact. This guy is out of control.
It also refocuses the attention of the fans on a spectacular piece of unfinished business, one of those issues they foolishly let drop in the early days of Dave King mania.
It’s the issue of security over the club’s assets, the ones Charles Green bought from the liquidators of the OldCo. Sevco fans knew those assets were the ball game and that only by putting them out of reach of those who might want to use them for fund raising purposes could they be sure of their future.
Sevco fans had got some vague guarantees about Ibrox, but they had wanted more.
They rightly don’t believe those guarantees, and they wanted an assignation of rights which put the stadium and the training ground in the hands of the fan organisations rather than the fabled “company”. But as with everything, they allowed themselves to be fobbed off with excuses, and now the issue is live again. The stadium is widely regarded as out of reach … but some wonder just how secure that agreement is. The training ground never was.
There have long been rumours swirling around regarding the future of Auchenhowie. More than one Sevco board has considered mothballing it altogether, and I still think that if they can’t sort their finances out and soon it’s something they will have to consider.
Clubs have had to do it before; it was the moment Leeds fans realised how much trouble their own club was in. Running a youth academy is expensive and if you are desperate to cut costs then it’s one of the areas where that can be done.
Indeed, Sevco has suffered years of cuts in this area already. When the club was set up, it took on an enormous wage bill under TUPE regulations. Visible cuts would have shattered the illusion of continuity; remember, this was a club that was revealed to be using first class hotels for third division footballers. Underneath all the bling, they started chopping and slicing. The hammer fell especially hard on their youth development projects.
This is why the whole structure is being rebuilt. On the cheap, because that, too, is expensive. Note the likes of John Brown in the scouting department. And whilst Murty is minding the first team, who’s running the reserves? So many questions never get asked of that club.
That’s why so many of them remain wholly unanswered.
But a club with their turnover simply cannot afford a major youth academy setup, not on top of paying the second highest wages in the country and signing players. The media is running stories that they are about to pay £1 million for an ex Motherwell player … where in God’s name is the money for that coming from?
Who believes this absolute bollocks?
The idea is ludicrous.
Financial reality can only be denied so long.
This club has ridden the edge of the line for way too long. Eventually there’ll be a crash.
Their fans are correct to be concerned about this story.
They failed in their efforts to secure the future of Auchenhowie, and they failed in prising the club out of the hands of charlatans; indeed, they delivered it to the biggest one of them all, and now he thinks it’s his to do with as he pleases.
They are in desperate straits here.
They are miles behind Celtic, and the only solution those around them have proposed is that somehow they magic money out of thin air and spend like Victoria Beckham at a Harrods sale. They will never be able to compete by spending big money on players and that means they need to produce their own.
This is their future we’re talking about here, their viability as a club.
And their crooked chairman has been trying to mortgage it out from under them.