This is going to be some week, folks. Some week for those of us who watch the circus act across town with great interest. Some week for those who’ve been following the pantomime. Get the jelly ready and set. Stock the freezer with the ice cream. Make sure the popcorn maker is full and find a comfortable chair. This one is going to be awesome.
Maybe.
Because although there’s every chance that King will depart in the next seven days in a blaze of publicity and perhaps even scandal, there’s also every reason to believe that he intends to hang on in there in spite of the swirl of trouble that surrounds him.
The trouble is mounting up on all sides for the Glib and Shameless one. But that doesn’t mean he’s beaten. This slippery sod always finds a way; he always sees an angle to string out the line a little farther. It would not surprise me if he managed to buy some time.
King came to Sevco with this reputation as some kind of great businessman. In fact, he was a big tax fraudster and a crook. His actual business skills are few and unremarkable. He is not and has never been an entrepreneur. He is not respected in the City or in the wine bars, golf clubs or bowling clubs of our so-called elite class. He is seen as a wide-boy with a good line in bullshit, although even that has failed him of late.
The guy wouldn’t get a job pushing a mop and bucket at Celtic Park. Can you see us even hiring this geezer to work in the mail room? Criminal convictions notwithstanding, he’s a blow-hard and a bully and entirely unimpressive.
But the man has a hide which a seasoned politician would struggle to match. If he can find even the slightest thread to pull on he will, and he will do so without an iota of shame or self-doubt. Remember, the crucial thing that the South African judges said was not that he was a “glib and shameless liar” but that he appears to lie, reflexively, about issues great and small. That’s the mark of a man who just don’t give a damn.
King has brazenly lied to the media, the fans and even members of his own board.
On the night the club sacked Mark Warburton he approved an announcement to the media that said the managerial team had resigned and the club had accepted their resignations.
Remember, he sat in front of Puma executives and told them that the battle with Sports Direct was nothing to do with them, although it prevented the sale of replica shirts. They later defied him by selling them, in connection with Sports Direct, through that website and their own.
He told the world that Mike Ashley had broken and that the club had got a favourable settlement in that dispute; it later transpired that the club paid £3 million to prevent court proceedings from going ahead. Ashley’s company is expected to get a new contract to sell the shirts.
He told the other board members he would put up £4 million personally, to see the team through the rest of this campaign. That money never materialised, sending them scrambling to Close Brothers for the first £3 million and the other million was the reason Club 1872 were being squeezed like a tube of toothpaste last night for the rest.
And let’s not forget that even as he was telling the Sevco AGM that the money was there, he was telling the court in the Takeover Panel case that he had no access to funds of his own.
Yeah, next week might well be the last we see of Dave King as chairman of Sevco … I think it’s about 60/40 against him still being there in seven days time … but it’s not assured. He has brass ones, and no mistake, and the neck to go with them. He might be perfectly willing to drag everyone down with him …. and they might be pliable or gullible enough to let him.
This show could run a while longer.
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