A story broke today which I found extremely interesting; it was, of course, from Phil and in it he said that Alastair Johnston is set to walk away from Sevco.
You can read the article here.
He also said that other resignations are pending.
This is not exactly unexpected; Phil has been charting a major series of fall outs and internal squabbles in their boardroom for quite a while now.
Two directors walked out a few weeks ago. Now others look set to follow. By the time it’s done will Sevco even have enough directors to call a board meeting? Technically, yes. As long as King and one other is there they would be able to run the company even if there was nobody else. But a company can become non-functional in any number of ways.
Resignations from the board at Ibrox are important. It’s the directors who have been keeping the lights on, and every person who does walking away over there removes another source of funds for when the rent comes due somewhere down the line. People think that as long as the Park’s are in the building the doors will stay open and that might well be true, but these people are not going to fund day-to-day losses and then pile more costs on top of them.
In short, these people are not mugs.
A number of King loyalists have already departed stage left. The word is that they are getting out before the City of London imposes the Cold Shoulder. They don’t want to be toxified by prolonged exposure to King and the consequences that accrue to knowing him. It’s too late for that in the eyes of many in the City, as Murray in particular will learn in time.
King has to be given credit for the Gerrard appointment; it was a masterstroke of PR, but then he could have appointed Mickey Mouse to be boss at Ibrox and the media here would have found a way to make it sound brilliant. Sevco fans lapped it up, and that was all King was interested in. An early summer crisis involving large numbers of non-renewals has thus been averted. I believe some on the board had been counting on just such a crisis.
It would have enabled them to call for King’s departure and a restructuring of the club. In plucking a moonbeam out of the sky in Gerrard, King has actually headed off a serious threat to his chairmanship, but a bigger one is just around the corner.
Sevco’s remaining directors – after whatever blood-bath comes next – will not be funding the next cash shortfall. If King gives Gerrard the season ticket money, he is the man who will have to find the money to meet the running costs and pay the bills as they come due; he has neither the resources nor the stomach for such a role.
But whatever King does next, there is serious trouble inside the walls of the club. The faction that doesn’t support the Gerrard appointment and which is trying to bring sanity to the place is losing the battle; the rumoured boardroom resignations are a sure sign that they know the game is up and they are willing to let King have his moment and do things his own way.
Anyone who thinks that’s a win for the Glib and Shameless Liar should think again though. Sevco is a club locked in a permanent cycle of crisis. They haven’t even got the professionalism to do a proper strip launch. What chance do they have of catching Celtic?
King wants to bet the whole house on a single spin of the wheel; the resignations which have happened already and which are coming are his fellow director’s way of telling him, and the Sevco fans, that they will let him have his fun.
But nobody should think buyers remorse will be entertained somewhere down the line. The oft-used term for a situation like this puts the onus on the guy at the top … “You broke it, you own it.” And now King does own it, and it’s already broke.
The fans just don’t know that yet and it may take them a while to figure it out, being that they are the most gullible, the most pliable, in all of football. Just this morning, I read Ibrox Noise’s latest editorial which claimed that Skrtel and his agent had “changed the terms” at the last minute; it was a naked attempt to spin a failed attempt to sign him. And it worked. The first few responses scorched the player for trying to “hold the club to ransom.”
There is nobody quite so delusional as a Sevconut.
But all the fairytales in the world will not protect them when the bills have to be paid in the coming campaign. If King hasn’t cut the wage bill significantly by then – and he has no plans even to try to – the results are going to hurt like nothing has ever hurt Sevco fans before.
And they deserve it. They deserve all of it. Their club continues to rot from the inside, and they are still chasing ghosts.