Imagine for a second that you heard a rumour that the kid next door was skipping school.
Say you met this kid in town and asked him flat out if he was dodging.
If he said no, of course not, you might well leave it at that and walk away, dismissing the rumours outright. But it the kid then said to you that the school was closed (which you know it isn’t cause your own kid goes there) and that lessons were being held in the local cinema, you might just smell a rat.
Stewart Robertson has denied January reports that Sevco, the financial basket case club he works for, was sailing close to the wind. Those reports were everywhere, and not just on the blogs. Sevco actually spoke to administrators. They had taken soundings on what it would all cost.
Something was definitely happening over there.
Since we know those reports were accurate, because we can do basic sums and understand that the promised money from Dave King never arrived as a result of his little legal dispute, we already know that Robertson is not being honest here.
But when he then tries to stand up his nonsense with an even more obvious lie, well that’s when your nose starts to twitch and you wonder how bad things really are. Had he left it at “we were never in danger of administration” then maybe you could let him off.
He’s just doing what a good CEO is supposed to do, and keeping alive the illusion of health.
But he blew it when he invoked the fake Morelos bid to prop it up. He blew it because it’s becoming increasingly clear, even to the doubters, that there was no bid, that the whole thing was a steaming pile of bullshit, and one the club really should be trying to put behind it.
The stupidity of everyone at Ibrox is manifest. I understood the rumour in the first place; they weren’t going to make any signings in the last few days of the window and wanted a distraction story. Celtic had brought in Musonda and were on the verge of another two players.
Sevco didn’t want the comparison to dominate the headlines.
And Phil has said there was another reason, a more pressing one, that the club was trying to use the story to crowbar money out of somebody, with tales of how a windfall from the Far East might well be forthcoming. We know that club is desperate. We know it is skint.
Nothing about that story sounds in any way far fetched or even unlikely.
Indeed, there has to be something in that story as it’s the only explanation for why anyone at the club would want to keep referencing this nonsense when it has already sparked chaos inside their own walls. Morelos agent still wants that wage rise; Sevco can try to stall him on that but not for very long, although I know why they want to.
The club is now awake to a brand new danger thrown up by this scenario; that he asks for, and gets, a wage increase that no club in the summer is prepared to match. That would leave him stuck at Ibrox, on a high salary, with his head quite obviously elsewhere and the club frantically having to fabricate even more ridiculous stories to drum up interest … stories which would only make him more determined to leave.
Still, the club is still using this story to support the assertion that they are financially sound. Ask yourself why a company which was in that position would need to issue a denial at all? Sevco is not listed on the stock exchange, there is no market-moving potential in rumours. If the stories have no credibility, why give them any by mentioning them?
And sure as Hell, you would never stand them up using a prop like this.
When it looks like it and smells like it, you surely don’t need to taste it to know what it is. Sevco wants the world to believe it’s in good health. If that was the objective then today got them headlines, but of the wrong sort. These only make us ask more questions.
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