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Have Close Brothers Already Started To Squeeze Sevco Over Their Land Guarantee?

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Yesterday and today, people have been busy tidying up around Ibrox. No joke. The famous roof that nothing was wrong with was being worked on. What’s more, other areas of the ground were getting a touch up and repair.

According to their fans this is all more proof that the club is “not skint”; actually, it’s proof that finally active measures have to be taken or the safety certificate will go.

I hear the roof thing is just a spot of tinkering, enough to bring it temporarily up to code.

There’s nothing substantial and nothing long-term happening with it. There was a lot of stuff on site – cranes and what have you – but they’ve gone now and they would be necessary if all you were doing was slapping some paint on the thing. And I hear something else too.

I hear that this outward work is being used to cover other activity.

One of the areas that got spruced up was the Albion Car Park. It wasn’t much, just a good clean up, a lick of paint, and a spot of surveying being done. I suspect the same is going on behind the scenes at Edminston House.

And that’s interesting, isn’t it?

Remember that story about Close Brothers that was in The Herald and which I highlighted on the blog? Well, as you’ll recall one of the provisions of this was that those two properties were to be maintained to a minimum standard, and Close would decide what that minimum standard was to be. It looks as if they’ve already started to squeeze.

The £3 million is already being eaten into, by a combination of necessary repairs to parts of the ground which impact on the safety certificate and on doing up those areas which form part of the Close Brothers loan deal.

According to Phil tonight, even with the £3 million loan, the club is facing a £1 million shortfall of money to get through the season. Quite where that is coming from I do not know, but they are busy giving new contracts out … although you’ll notice that Morelos hasn’t got his yet, eah? Is that in anticipation, or hope, for a real Chinese bid?

Cause there’s no point in giving the guy a new deal until you know he’s definitely going to be hanging around, right? And all the speculation is intended to do two things; to drive up the price and to spark actual interest.

And that’s the priority, because I hear whispers that the club has been advertising his availability to China and Russia … their window is open for another seven days but they’ve been oddly absent from the narrative here.

Expect that to change. The media either doesn’t know that he’s being offered to clubs there or aren’t running it … but as it adds credibility to the narrative about him being a wanted man I strongly suspect you’ll read of “interest” soon enough.

It will not matter; he’ll be at Ibrox until the summer and then the nonsense will start for real as they try to link him to every league in Western Europe. The need for cash over there is now acute, and desperate. It would be just like them if they had borrowed £3 million for running costs only to burn through it on necessary measures.

Only they could get a loan and then find out that part of the cash was going straight out satisfying the requirements of those who gave it to them.

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