Graeme Murty made an astonishing admission to the media today, as he talked up his team’s chances of getting their first win in four games this weekend.
The story as to what his future holds is one of the biggest in Scottish football.
Everyone knows this. That it’s still up in the air with six games left to go of the league campaign is pretty ridiculous. When Celtic knocks Sevco out of the cup next weekend the clamour for his sacking will reach monumental proportions; the club is mad to pretend it can ignore that.
Murty himself must know it. His future is not in his own hands anymore, and today he revealed that the man who does hold the key to it never speaks to him. Graeme Murty has almost no contact at all with Dave King, the club chairman, who’s embroiled in his own troubles right now but currently holds all the influence at Basket Case FC.
Murty says he talks to Allen and Robertson regularly; well, good for him. But little good it does him, because as Phil and myself and others have pointed out and explored in great detail, Ibrox has one of the most dysfunctional management set-ups anywhere in football.
There are two boards over there, neither of which can make key decisions without the other, one of which was never in favour of Murty in the first place, and over all of it is King himself, who’s liberum veto can stall anything at any time.
Murty offered this delicious line about the lines of communication:
“I speak to them on a daily basis about plans for the summer, plans pre-season, about plans for recruitment.”
But why bother unless you know whether or not those plans will be implemented? Why bother if those plans are just going to be tossed aside when someone else comes in? This is why Sevco’s current policy is rank insanity. If it wasn’t bad enough, the World Cup means that virtually all football business across Europe will come to a shuddering halt for nearly a month during that period when those kind of plans are being in place.
He then offers this bizarre qualifier:
“As to my own role I am under no doubt and there is clarity for me, I am in charge until the end of the season. I don’t expect to hear anything before that.”
How the Hell can he call a total lack of any information on which to make forward plans “clarity”? It is the absolute opposite of that, and he knows it and we know it and the hacks who sat there and listened to that, presumably without challenging it, know it too.
When Celtic lost the Scottish Cup semi-final two years ago, Ronny Deila’s position was made clear to all of us just days later. He was given until the end of the season, but he was told that his time as manager would be over when it was. It was the correct call, although I had serious doubts at the time. It was also, however, also a genuinely human decision, one I’m now very proud that our club took. It allowed him dignity and to depart on a victorious note … we owe Ronny a Hell of a lot. It was most definitely the right thing to do.
Telling Murty where he stands is the right thing for Sevco to do.
It’s the right thing for their supporters too. Next weekend, in a panic, I expect they’ll move to protect season ticket sales by telling him he’s done at the end of the campaign. That will hurt them in their quest for second place, but they’re going to be left with little choice.
The fact is, I think the decision’s already been made, by King.
He’s desperate to sell season tickets with so much going on, and he can’t ask fans to buy them to watch a guy in whom most of them have lost faith.
It was the same decision Celtic faced, but our position was not so desperate, the act of appointing Ronny in the first place not so shambolic and the consequences of the wrong call nowhere near so enormous.
Murty was a fall-guy right from the start. That King’s board is still stringing him along with “what might happen” is shocking and underserved. And there are some of them who still believe that this guy will quietly go back to coaching the kids when all this is done.
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