Congratulations to Phil again for going where the mainstream media couldn’t or wouldn’t go; he has, once more, produced the goods and shone some light into the dark corners of Ibrox, and as he and this site predicted, the full details of the Close Brothers’ agreement with Sevco tells a very different story to that which the media was pushing when it was announced.
As I wrote here, that deal is so toxic our media didn’t want to push it too hard. Even they knew there was something extremely fishy about this.
Today Phil has posted a link to the document which they have to file with Companies House, and as per our prediction it make two things clear which no Sevco supporter wanted to hear but now have no option but to face.
First, this was not and it is not an overdraft, which was the central claim made by Stewart Robertson. Frankly, if he has seen this document and he still wants to stick to that line then I suggest the club fires him immediately, because if he can’t tell a loan document when he reads it then he’s either scandalously lax at his job or his framed qualifications for it were bought in a car boot sale and his name cleverly superimposed onto them.
This is a loan.
There is simply no doubting that at all.
Close Brothers are even referred to in it as “the lender”. Sevco is referred to as “the borrower.”
The document refers to fixed terms. Repayments. Compound interest. All in all, it leaves no doubt whatsoever that when Sevco briefed the media they lied. They lied about what this is. They certainly lied about what it means.
The second thing this makes clear is that the club is now in dire straits. As the bloggers predicted, and as Phil has made clear, this is the money Dave King said he would produce.
His legal problems are just one of the reasons why he was never going to. We spelled this out enough times; that man is not wealthy enough to do this, South African exchange controls complicate things massively and the man has lied so many times his nose could poke a hole in the ozone layer.
Yet even if none of that were true, when a man sends his legal representatives into court to tell the judge he is skint he cannot, a week later, produce £4 million from behind the sofa cushions.
If he did he would be guilty of perjuring himself at the very least; a signed deposition is as good as a statement on the stand. The second he told that brazen lie he made it fact … the result is the same. Even if he has the money he can’t give it to the club.
Everything you read in the mainstream media on this subject was nonsense. Surprised, right? No, I thought not. But with King’s money now off the table, and with the club running to the Wonga companies, the true nature of the financial state of the club is laid bare.
And Phil has lobbed another hand grenade over the garden fence; his sources inside Ibrox have confirmed what this means, and it is contained in perhaps the deadliest phrase that has appeared in print since this whole thing began.
I beg Phil’s indulgence to post the appropriate line in full:
“What is now discernible is that the Sevco cash shortfall is now beyond the means of directors.”
Take a look at those words again. Read them.
The last time words like that were spoken in connection with the Ibrox operation was in November 2011, at the Hotel Di Vin, where Craig Whyte told a delegation from the SPL and the SFA that Rangers was on a course that led to only one place; the boneyard.
That sentence says that time has almost run out.
The club will get through the season; this season.
But next season will be a very different story. A dramatic turnaround has to happen at Ibrox before then; finally, the real reason for the Morelos story has come into focus. They need to sell him, or someone, for the highest possible price they can get. Because without it the lights are going out.
Beyond the means of directors.
These guys have finally realised they’re not going to see any of their money back. They’ve decided that they will not be throwing any more of their cash down the black hole. And in a moment of beautiful irony, they now have, in Close Brothers, a perfect alibi.
What these guys feared, above all, was being seen to be responsible if the lights went out at Ibrox. If the club simply came to a halt whilst director’s loans were the only visible debt these guys would hav carried the can, no matter how unfair that would have been.
They, after all, have gone above and beyond in keeping the club afloat. The Peepul would not have cared. The current board would have been the men who brought the club to its knees.
Not so now. When Sevco takes the bullet it will be Close who pull the trigger; they are the secured creditor, they will get their money’s worth either way and so at this point it doesn’t matter whether the Sevco board members have decided not to spend any more of their own money supporting this nightmare or if they are simply unable to – they are not men of unlimited means after all.
Phil is correct; the involvement of Close means that the era of the director’s loans is over. And that means the club will have to find next season’s shortfall somewhere else.
If there is interest in Morelos that may just come to the rescue, although that’s unlikely for two key reasons. First, that interest will most certainly not be at the £8 million level which they are wetting their pants over. Ibrox Noise thinks they could get a Scottish transfer record fee for him … they were talking, hysterically, about £15 million this morning.
It is a pipedream. If they get £4 million they will be very fortunate. The “Turkish interest” is real, or so I’m reliably informed, but that merely means they’ve heard he’s good and are sending scouts to take a look at him. Unless Sevco slips something potent into their Bovril nobody is going to be phoning home telling a club to start the bidding at the upper end of seven figures.
That’s the flaw in their media strategy; at some point a club has to send people to actually look at this guy and base their value on verifiable data and the professional opinions of people who are not paid to pander to the supremacist mentality in the Ibrox stands.
Without a major cash injection in the £10 million range, that club is not going to survive next season. That is not speculation, that is a cold hard fact.
Secondly, any cash that they bring in for transfers will leave the fans expecting – demanding – that it be spent on new players. The media is so full of “we are not in a position where we need to sell” stories that it will make it very difficult to sell the supporters on the idea that there are bills to be paid and that any incoming monies will be earmarked for that.
As usual, they are in a bind of their own making. And even as these stories break their club is signing Tavernier on an improved deal – they are going to offer him everywhere in the summer and they are trying to maximise his value – and still talking about giving Morelos more money.
If their grand scheme to get rid of these guys for big bucks fails to bear fruit, then their entire fiscal strategy since the turn of this year will detonate over Ibrox like a nuke.
On the anniversary of the last major explosion over there this news is the last thing their fans would have wanted to read. As usual, they’ll pretend it isn’t real … but the document which Phil posted a link to in his piece is most definitely real and its meaning is pretty plain.
The Good Ship Sevco is going down. The guys down in the engine room are working the pumps, but all that does is buy a little time. That club is holed below the waterline though … and unless the rescue ship arrives there’s no doubt as to the outcome.
Directors may lie. Newspapers do lie. Bloggers are accused of lying all the time.
But the numbers don’t and these spell disaster.
From this point on the administration countdown clock is ticking.
As the grand old vessels designer tells Kate Winslet’s character at the crucial moment of reckoning in the movie Titanic, “The ship will sink. It is a mathematical certainty.”
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