Sevco stumbled into another absolute shambles last night as it was revealed that representatives from the club approached Steve Clarke’s people before they went to talk to Steven Gerrard. So not only is the Liverpool man their second choice and will now know this via the media, but it means that Sevco has once again been snubbed by someone close enough to home to know that the job stinks like a dead fish.
And that must make any potential candidate wonder what’s going on.
As if the spectacle of approaching Gerrard after Clarke has knocked them back isn’t bad enough, the real story is that of Graeme Murty who will have to sit in front of the media today knowing he’s finished, that the decision is made, that the club has been speaking to other people behind his back. How is that guy supposed to rally a team for Sunday? How is that guy supposed to get the players behind him, when they know he’s a bust?
What a mess this is. The media, as ever, wants you to focus on Gerrard the big name, about the club showing courage and imagination. Yet they don’t have the courage to tell Graeme Murty to his face that he’s already gone.
They don’t have the imagination to craft a vision that could entice the managers of Kilmarnock and Aberdeen.
Clarke has denied there was a concrete offer from the club; this is a measure of the class that man has. He doesn’t want to say anything that puts more pressure on Murty and in point of fact he’s telling the truth. It never got as far as a concrete offer because he rejected the whole idea out of hand before it ever progressed to one.
The third party approach was initiated so that the club could avoid any risk of a public snub like the one they got from McInnes last year, but it has made the papers anyway which is a testimony to how much that club leaks like a sieve.
All this should worry their supporters. It should worry them in a way that the results don’t. It should worry them more than Dave King’s dodging of the Takeover Panel. It should worry them more than the piling up debts and the numerous other issues.
The ability to appoint a decent manager is central to the running of a football team and if you cannot do that with a degree of professionalism then people are right to ask just what you are capable of. The pursuit of Gerrard is public. It is out there. It is not a secret. Even Jurgen Klopp has been forced to comment on it, so it is hardly something that can be readily dismissed as mere tittle-tattle or speculation. It’s real and the knock back will be real.
The media frenzy over this would be plainly ludicrous even if it were not for the man currently sitting in the Ibrox dugout, who has to face them today knowing that everyone in the room is well aware that his future has been decided. If he says to the best of his knowledge that’s not the case, then you’ll know. If he refuses to comment, you’ll know.
This is a farce. I thought I had seen it all, but this is the biggest shambles yet at Ibrox.
There is no parallel anywhere in football for what this club is like. They are a joke.
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