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The Morelos Lie Has Become Toxic To The Media Because It Is Now Being Used To Hide Other Lies.

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There’s a fantastic scene in Season 3 of The Wire, and it takes place after a dark act plunges the Barksdale drug organisation into chaos and crisis. Avon, their leader, agonises over that moment because he knows how the street will read it. He also knows what actually happened.

He sits in a meeting room with his top hit man, Slim Charles, and they try to sort out the mess.

Avon doesn’t want to do what he knows has to be done.

Charles cuts to the chase.

“Don’t matter who did what to who at this point. Fact is, we went to war and now there ain’t no goin’ back. I mean … it’s what war is, you know? Once you in it, you in it. If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight.”

What Slim has realised, and what he articulates better than any politician ever could, is that some situations leave you with no choices at all. They cross a line which leaves no room for manoeuvre, except at a cost so high that moving forward, with all its attendant risks, seems like the wisest, indeed the only rational, course of action.

Our media has painted itself into one of those corners today, by their inaction and their fear of contradicting the official word out of Sevconia. The club has, itself, become ensnared in its own web of distortions and untruths, but I don’t feel the slightest sympathy for them.

I don’t feel any for the media either, just a weariness that even now they haven’t got the guts to do the one thing that would save them from embarrassment; calling the Ibrox PR operation the bunch of shameless liars that every single one of us knows them to be.

The Morelos story which crawled out of its own grave this morning was not entirely unexpected, because when Companies House published the devastating document relating to the Close Brothers loan earlier this week it destroyed, at a stroke, the narrative of Sevco as a club who’s finances were in good condition. We knew that story was a lie, but the documented proof of it has erased even the smallest doubt about it.

Everyone knows that story is bollocks.

Everyone knows the club has gone to a lender of last resort, and everyone knows exactly what that means.

The Morelos story has been resurrected, with even more fabulous numbers, to challenge verifiable facts.

There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Beijing Renhe is remotely interested in the Sevco player; indeed, all available information confirms our suspicion that nothing about this tale can stand up to scrutiny. The fee would result in a 100% transfer tax – costing the club £18 million rather than the £9 million in the story – and the deal itself would violate the squad registrations rules which govern the game over there.

The idea that £18 million could not be better spent than on an SPL footballer who’s only other career goals were scored in Finland is so obvious as not to need pointing out. The story reminds me of the Friends episode were Ross and Chandler argue over authorship of a joke which appears in Playboy; the joke itself is so bad they should be ashamed of any association with it, but for reasons known only to themselves they persist in trying to claim “credit.”

The papers are fighting to outdo each other over one of the most transparently fictitious transfer stories of all time, and what makes it worse is that the resurrection of this tale is so clearly designed to give cover to the lie about the Close Brothers loan that the media has to see it as clearly as we do. They are using one nonsense story to hide the fact that another nonsense story has been exposed for the whole world to see.

And that is a new low, even for our press.

Look, we’re not making this stuff up; the Close Brothers loan agreement is available for anyone who wants to go and see it. The media was lied to by Robertson and his club; they have a responsibility to their readers to contest that lie. They should be going to the club’s spokespeople and challenging them openly on their misleading comments and asking for clarification. The evidence is there, in their hands; there’s no wiggle room here.

The trouble is, once you accept that the club lied and has had to go for Wonga loans to get through this campaign then you simply cannot accept that they would have turned down such a transfer fee for a footballer barely worth a quarter of it. It does not stand up. Qualifying for the Europa League in second place, or as cup winners, will not bring a cash windfall that size so this idea of keeping him “for footballing reasons” is obvious nonsense.

No trophy is worth jeopardizing the financial wellbeing of the club.

Or it wouldn’t be anywhere else, but this lot are desperate for a solid accomplishment to boast about.

But not that desperate that such a bid would be rejected; they are not, after all, insane.

That’s more money than they’ll ever see in one go again.

The Daily Record “reported” yesterday that Morelos has overtaken Asprilla as the Colombian player with the most European club goals. Wow. But he was scoring them for an EPL team and a Serie A side before that, whereas Morelos has his in the Finnish Veikkausliiga and the SPL. The report says that a poll in a Colombian sports daily says that a majority of fans wants to see Morelos in the national team squad for the World Cup.

What it doesn’t say is whether the average IQ of the readers of that paper is higher or lower than those which read The Daily Record itself. If I knew a Scottish player was scoring goals in a foreign league and I was asked if he should be considered for the national team I would have said “yes”, because of course he should … but if that league turned out to be the Swiss second tier I don’t think I would be terribly impressed if he was suddenly to win caps. Of course, that was before today’s announcement; now I don’t really give a damn who is selected for Scotland any longer as I won’t be watching them anyway. I suspect I won’t be alone in that.

The trouble, as I’ve said before, with all this Morelos nonsense is that other clubs will not accept flowery nonsense in the Scottish media – and obvious lies – when it comes to actually buying this guy. Nobody believed the Barrie Mackay nonsense, nor that the club would have turned down £6 million.

They will have noted that he was eventually sold for a quarter of that.

No, interested parties will scout this guy extensively. And that’s when Sevco’s carriage and four turns into a pumpkin and a bunch of mice because he’s not remotely worth that sort of money and it will take the average talent spotter for a top club a single afternoon to work that out. There will be no major bid in the summer, although I suspect they will try to spin that, invent further phantom bids and claim it a sign of ambition that they are “holding out”.

Except that they will crack the first time a modest seven figure offer actually does get made; they may hide it behind talk of an “undisclosed fee” and try to spin that as they will, but buying clubs usually come down hard on talk that they’ve overpaid, so that strategy has a brief shelf life lasting only as long as other people are willing to keep quiet.

How much easier it would be for the hacks if they were willing just to say that Sevco is skint – remember, we can prove that – and took it from there.

But instead they’ve opted to defend the lie, which means printing more lies on top of it.

And that’s what we’re up against here; a media culture which would rather continue to spin a web of untruth than unpick it and do their damned jobs.

The next time you hear the MSM complaining about “fake news” try not to laugh too loud.

Here in Scotland they are the ones who invented it.

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