Want A Laugh? Check Out The Barmy Sevco Website’s Ten Point Plan To Take The Club To Success.

Ibrox Noise disgusted us all yesterday with a vicious article on Brendan Rodgers that was so unhinged it took your breath away.

That website is usually good for a laugh; yesterday’s article, highlighted on this site, was as sickening and shameful as anything I’ve ever read. Lads, I am disappointed in you. The casual bigotry is always there, but there’s always something to laugh at too; there was nothing funny about that piece.

Thankfully, they’ve provided us with a little light relief since, a little bit of good humour.

It too is unhinged, but a much more jovial, much more amusing, version of Barking Mad.

Can you believe it? The last Peepul on Earth to realise that their club was on a downward trajectory and run by crooks are now proposing their own blueprint for success.

When blogs have to do it that, it tells you all you need to know about how convincing the club’s objectives are.

Yes, Ibrox Noise have published their Ten Point Plan for success at their club.

Marvel at it.

I am going to do a precis of it here so you can be astounded.

This, by the way, is why even the Sevco directors are too smart to want fans on the board.

Stage One: Finish Second. For The Cash. And For An Easier Route To The Europa League Groups.

Don’t laugh now, that’s what the first stage goal is.

An easier route to the Europa League Groups and the vast fortune of £2 million the SPFL bestows upon also-rans.

First up, the goal of finishing second is realistic, because Aberdeen are managed by one of the dumbest men in football, an abject coward who’s team seems incapable of winning when it really matters. I think second is something that they could accomplish because of McInnes.

The danger might be Hibs, who are playing well and unlike Aberdeen have no fear of Ibrox having won their twice.

Of course, none of this speaks to the possibility that Murty feels so undermined by King’s statement yesterday that he folds the hand, or that the team realises they don’t have to play for him or prove their futures to him because he soon won’t be around.

In that scenario, a fourth place finish can’t be ruled out, which would send that club into summer meltdown.

Wouldn’t it be lovely?

Of those currently at the club, some will smell weakness on Murty and blood in the air. Kenny Miller in particular might have ideas; this is his third shot at moving into position for the manager’s job. We wish him all the luck in the world, of course.

As to their second reason for wanting the second spot, an easier path to the Europa League groups … try not to laugh too much. I am busting a gut, it’s true, but then I’m also watching Dave Chappelle, so I have a ready excuse. The simple truth, as we all know, is that their fans will see UFO’s before they see European group stage football.

Stage Two: Sell Morelos To The Chinese Fairies And Bring In Lots Of Lovely Beanstalk Beans.

Morelos will go. That’s clear enough.

They will find a mug.

What they will not do, and what they are counting on, is that they will find a mug willing to pay upwards of £8 million for him.

No joke, that’s what Stage Two depends on; selling this geezer for Wanyama style money, from the SPL, with no European exposure, and less goals than Kris Boyd.

There are many reasons why this is so delicious.

They really do believe in the fabled “Chinese bid”, a story that has changed so many times you’d think it was Chinese Whispers instead. I read just the other day of how the club has told Morelos that it was Guangzhou Evergrande who had tried to sign him; how many versions of this story are there now?

Is nobody keeping track of them?

Nobody from China, even as a joke, sanctioned a mammoth transfer offer for Alfredo Morelos.

Nobody is going to.

This is a fairytale, and I don’t care how many journalists are convinced of the veracity of it. The story was blown to pieces by the bloggers on the very first day. That it morphed through four or five different resurrections and major changes in the media speaks to the desperation of the hacks and the Ibrox PR people to manufacture interest in this guy. But there is no truth in it whatsoever.

What makes Stage Two especially hilarious, in this case, is that much of what you will read later is wholly dependent on this fabulous transfer deal going through …

Stage Three: Buy Useless Dreck Currently Underachieving At The Club.

Stage three is lovely stuff.

Pay £1 million for Jason Cummings, who dropped out of the team at the weekend for 38 year old Kenny Miller. And then pay another £1 million for Jamie Murphy. Then more money on top of that for Goss, who that same site has spent weeks slagging stupid.

They are the future don’t you know?

In spite of none of those players exactly setting the heather on fire thus far in their “loan deals”, Ibrox Noise wants Sevco to spend a small fortune on them.

Goss’ club doesn’t want to sell, or are least they’re telling Sevco that to drive up the price. Murphy’s club Brighton were so keen to keep him they let Sevco have him on hire purchase. When a senior Sevco player was asked the other day who the dumbest member of the squad, the guy with the lowest IQ (the lowest IQ at Sevco; just think about that) he said Cummings with no hesitation. Tell us something we didn’t know.

(That’s him in the picture. I mean, what else is there to say?)

Stage Four: Someone, Anyone, Please, Take The Managers Job!

This one has me in fits of giggles. Sack Murty, as expected, and start all over again.

Let’s just look at some of the things wrong with that suggestion.

First, forget Stage 3 if Stage 4 happens.

No new manager is going to sanction spending like that out of his own budget just because the stand in boss who’s just been shuffled out the door fancied the players in question. No new manager will allow his squad makeup to be dictated by circumstance like that, no matter who he is.

Secondly, we’ve surely been here already haven’t we? King and his board like the cheap option, if that wasn’t readily apparent. They brought McCall in from the ranks of the unemployed, Warburton in on the cheap, found Caixinha God knows where and hired Murty because nobody else wanted the job. Why do Sevco fans believe fifth time is the charm with King and his board? Because Mark Allen will be calling the shots? Don’t make me laugh more.

Third, if the walking embodiment of the Real Rangers Man wouldn’t leave Aberdeen and the warm embrace of Stewart Milne to move to Ibrox, having already made sure he’d delivered second place to their club, who the Hell will take it?

Steve Clarke? Don’t bet on it, Sevco fans. Do not bet on it.

Clarke, of course, is one of the names Ibrox Noise has thrown in as a possibility; are you ready for a parade of mediocrity?

Frank De Boer (sacked from his last two clubs, his stay in England being almost hilariously short; he would still want huge sums, both for himself and for his transfer kitty. Mark it under Not A Hope In Hell), Steve Robinson (of Motherwell; no, there is not another one of them barnstorming his way to a league title somewhere); Tommy Wright (of St Johnstone. Yes, that one, whose team is currently eighth) …. and Stuart McCall.

Yes, you read it correctly, no need to rub your eyes. Stuart McCall.

This is the height of their ambition.

This is Stage Four of their ten point plan.

Stage Five: Break Out Those Magic Beans And Fix That Damned Defence.

Remember all those media stories over the last few months about how Sevco’s bomb-scare defence was causing palpitations in the stands and in the dugout? All those stories about how poor their players there were at doing the simplest things? About how they were frequently carved open like Christmas dinners, by even the most basic teams?

No, neither do I.

All the stories about bad defending have focussed on Celtic Park, but the truth as anyone who watches football in Scotland knows is that our defence is an iron rear-guard next to the shambling ruin of one at Ibrox, and bringing in stalwart Russell Martin has not made them look any stronger, although he still wound up back in the Scotland squad.

Ibrox Noise’ answer to this is for the club to spend the Morelos fairy money on, and I quote, “three high quality CBs, between the ages of 25-33 (no left-field youth from ‘West Brom’s prestigious academy’ or washed up old mercenaries please), and get the rearguard sorted.”

In other words, “anyone, of any age, washed up or not, as long as they are willing to play for this club and lead us to the glory that has been denied us so long.”

The caveat they won’t mention is that these guys will have to be cheap, whether they get the Morelos fairy money or not. Or do they think the money to buy their three loanees and rebuild the management team literally is out there growing on trees somewhere?

It amazes me that their defence has had a free ride in the media so far; it is truly rank rotten.

Two of those who are most to blame – Tavernier and John – will presumably still be at the club as they are not central defenders at all.

Well, there’s always next year and the Twenty Point Plan for dealing with that.

Stage Six: Fix The Scouting Network So We Don’t Have To Sign Crap Players.

Critics have a name for what Sevco has been doing for the past six or so years now; they call it Sky Sports Scouting.

I’ll tell you why I find it so funny.

There’s a section of the Football Manager forums over at SI Games which deals with what they call the Lower League Challenge.

You can’t have played the game and not have done this; you’re missing out on a real thrill. In the Lower League Challenge you are tasked with starting with a club at the very bottom of a national tier. You cannot make your manager more experienced (you can’t make him a former international, for example) than you are. You cannot use editors or any enhanced database for the game. No modifications at all.

On top of that, you have to build a team based on data available to you in the in-game universe.

You cannot, for example, sign a young whiz-kid because you have seen him in real life, know he’s something special and that he’s going to be big. Unless your scouts turn him up and recommend him to you, he might as well not exist.

I think of that a lot when I think about Sevco’s scouting system. Murphy, Martin, Cummings … these guys were secured via Sky Sports Scouting. Players someone at Ibrox knows because he’s seen them on the telly. Goss, perhaps, was an Allen recommendation, found “the right way” but even he seems to have been secured as a cheap option.

What Celtic do is the Real Kind of player identification.

We have a global network which finds players for us, and although there’s a little of Brendan’s real-life knowledge in there, we don’t rely on just that to get players in.

The trouble is, a scouting network costs money. A lot of money. And even then you need to be quick at spotting people, because the EPL giants are looking too as are clubs all across Europe. And you need to be willing to take risks, like we did with the likes of Ntcham and Eboue. That, too, costs money; those players cost us around £8 million between them … roughly the same amount that Crazy Pedro got to spend on a whole team.

Ibrox Noise, in keeping with a lot of their sites, think we just luck onto players and this stuff is easy and cheap. This will cost more than just Morelos fairy money. They’ll need every magic bean they can get their hands on just to get to where we were ten years ago.

Stage Seven: Tell Us The Truth Oh King David Of Lie. Please Tell Us The Truth.

Ibrox Noise wants transparency for Stage Seven.

Full disclosure, no matter how painful.

Except if that in any way interferes with the ongoing fantasies contained in Stages one through five.

Here’s the thing; they could have had the truth any time they liked it. Hell, they can have it right now. It’s out there, it doesn’t have to be looked for. If some of them are reading this site (and I know you do, folks) then there’s plenty of it here if they care to look. And on Phil’s site, and Joe’s and on the Johnjames blog and on E-Tims and a dozen other places … if they want to see it. I cannot accentuate that point enough.

And this is just the Celtic sites. There are anti-Dave King sites written by their own fans which will lay it all out for them if they want to read it.

The difficult thing is that if King ever did tell them the truth they’ve be furious.

Because the truth is that the money has just about run out. Robbing Peter to pay Paul has kept the lights on thus far, but that can’t last and everyone involved in the charade knows it. They are almost at the end of that particular rope; all that remains is for someone to cut the chord.

Their club is years behind Celtic with no plan for how to close the gap.

Celtic’s wealth and position is built on sustainable foundations; no disaster looms to sweep it all away.

Their own club continues to run up debts.

If it looks from the outside that there is no plan, that there is no strategy, transparency will only confirm that it looks that way from the inside too.

Be careful what you wish for, that’s all I’m saying.

Life in the bubble will get uncomfortable as the air runs out … but are you folks really ready for the truth?

I don’t think so.

Stage Eight: Share And Share Alike? We Need To Know What Our Shares Are Worth!

As they’ve pointed out, this rolls up with Stage Seven.

And like with Stage Seven the answer is already out there if they want it; King and Club 1872 have told them exactly what the current status of the share issue is. If the debt-for-equity swap happens the fan’s shareholding will be reduced significantly unless the fans pay £1 million to maintain it. Future share issues, if they ever get off the ground, will reduce it unless the fans fork out more unspecified sums. The dream of fan ownership at Ibrox was always a fantasy; now it’s dead.

The chances of another share issue depend on a number of things; King extricating himself and the club from the developing Takeover Panel mess, which he’s still not done in spite of numerous opportunities. Finding a nomad, which wasn’t easy even for the old board. Finding an exchange willing to list them. Putting together a prospectus.

None of it will be done on a shoestring, which is what they have to work with.

“Investment won’t happen unless the club gets on an exchange,” the writer wails.

Guess what? It won’t happen anyway.

Nobody with wealth is going to sink a brass farthing of it into a West of Scotland football club with delusions of grandeur and especially not one who’s supporters spend an inordinate part of their time up to their knees in blood and indulging in hate.

Sevco is not a “good investment.” Everyone knows it.

There’s some transparency for them.

Stage Nine: Asian TV Money Grows On Trees As Well, Apparently.

Stage Nine might be my favourite bit.

Secure a big bucks deal with an Asian TV company, selling the club to a whole new audience.

Wow. Just wow.

Can you imagine how the conversation would go? Can you imagine the focus group watching one of their games and asking what the banners and songs mean? Can you imagine them asking what the Hell these things have to do with football? Imagine the answer you’d get.

Besides, aren’t Asian TV companies just falling over themselves to throw money at Sevco v Hamilton on a wet Wednesday night?

Hey, I want heads to roll at Celtic Park because we didn’t think of this first ….

Oh wait. We did.

Our signings of Mizuno, Nakamura, Du Wei and Ki were designed with this explicit purpose, and in Naka we had a genuine national hero over there playing for our club. And it worked. To a certain extent. But do you notice that we never repeated the experiment? Those players all cost us money; we made a good profit on Ki overall and Naka delivered us some monumental memories apart from being Box Office … but we never went out and signed another Asian player.

You know why?

The EPL got there well ahead of us.

Read this bit for delusional; “Asia is where the money is – we need to get a broadcast deal with an Asian nation (Indonesia could be a great bet), grow our exposure there and increase the fanbase.”

Indonesia? Average monthly income; $168.

There are 300 million people in that country; I guess it’s not impossible that Club 1872 might find a few mugs there, but let’s be realistic. How difficult is it going to be to teach them the words of The Billy Boys or The Famine Song? How many are going to buy replica shirts, at an average cost of $60? How many of them will be debentures, Ibrox bricks, season tickets … how much do you think companies pay to advertise on Indonesian TV? Where’s the money here?

These Peepul are thick, they really are.

They can’t “increase the fanbase” here in Scotland, to people who speak the same language. How the Hell are they going to convince Asian fans who’ve never heard of them and are bombarded, daily, with Manchester City ads, to buy a run-of-the-mill blue shirt with Cummings on the back of it?

What’s the Unique Selling Point here?

Formed in 2012, steeped in bigotry ever since?

Jesus wept.

Stage Ten: Get Out There And Meet The World. 

I will present this to you exactly as it reads;

“We need to get out there – to Asia. EPL clubs cottoned onto this decades ago – remember that Arsenal bus propaganda video in Vietnam during pre-season tour there in 2013? Brilliant work from the Gunners to propagate their brand – it’s why they’re one of the world’s biggest clubs. They sussed the Asian market forever ago. We need to go to these places, pick up new supporters, spread the brand and get the money in.”

Oh where even to start with this?

First, there’s a reason why, as the article puts it, the friendly schedule these past few years amounts to “the trashy pre-seasons at West Highland Warriors in three-part shambles or visits from Dumbarton Juniors to Auchenhowie.” Those were cheap options, and teams have to want to play you.

Second, did you know Arsenal made Vietnamese propaganda videos?

Me neither.

Third, yes, EPL clubs sussed it years ago … which is why they virtually own the market over there. So how is a West of Scotland club with serious cultural deficiencies going to crack that door open, even a fraction? And let me repeat, Celtic tried it. Why aren’t we still doing it if it’s as easy as the goon who wrote this seems to believe?

Arsenal are “one of the world’s biggest clubs” because they play in one of the world’s most hyped leagues.

They are not an SPL team fighting for third spot.

The Sevco “brand” is a myth. I repeat, what is the USP? What makes them different from other clubs except a fascination with imperialism, militarism and sectarianism? I’ve got news for you; those things have already been exported to Asia, by the west, and we’re not popular as a result of it. Does this goober know the first thing about Indonesia? I’ll tell you; we sell them military equipment. Which the government uses to slaughter its civilians.

You are not going to sell a lot of RAF-Sevco tat over there.

Sevco hasn’t limited itself to highland league competitions either; they played in the Florida Mickey Mouse Cup recently.

Their fans went out and “met the world.”

And they sang sectarian songs and the competition organisers are still mortified about it today.

How Not To Win Friends And Influence People.

Delusional Beyond The Point Of Self Parody.

That, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is bonkers. All of it.

It depends on getting money for Morelos, spreading it so thin on the ground it would be like tissue paper, Dave King being honest, their fans being ready for the truth, the stock market listing them, people wanting to buy shares for something other than expensive toilet roll and the club having some hitherto unknown marketing potential in a country where the average annual salary wouldn’t pay the fines of a single Hampden rioter.

Oh yes, and Sevco finding the Lost Tribe Of Bridgeton; an entire Asian enclave of Billy Boys.

Why am I unconvinced by all this?

Why don’t I see this coming to pass?

Because I’m sane, maybe?

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