For a long time now on this site, I have been warning the fans of clubs outside of Glasgow about the consequences of Scottish football not having Financial Fair Play regulations; this is their last warning. Either they get serious about this issue and start banging on their own clubs’ doors to get this matter resolved once and for all, and to put it at the very top of the agenda, or they and their teams will pay the consequences of it for years to come.
Yesterday the Great Saviour was unveiled at Ibrox. On Monday, Dave King will address the media to tell them how it’s going to be paid for. Speculation is rife that he will be announcing his own departure at the same time. If he is, that’s good. Because he has been a toxic presence in Scottish football and is partially responsible for the poison that seeps out of Ibrox on a daily basis. If people come in who make that look more professional and ditch the likes of Traynor and the other goons that would be a welcome development.
But don’t hope for sanity, and a club that runs itself right. The Peepul will never swallow that. Frankly it doesn’t matter who’s at the head of that table, the people running Sevco will forever be forced towards fiscal lunacy by the expectations of their season ticket base. If King departs stage left on Monday, it’s because he is too toxic even for Ibrox.
If it’s not that, and King stays, and this guy suddenly produces money from the mattress, well that is something that needs to be looked at very carefully. Yesterday at that press conference he said that “it doesn’t matter” where the funding comes from; that line might work in the Blue Room in front of panting, salivating, media lackeys but it certainly ought not to be good enough to meet the requirements of full disclosure demanded by the SFA.
Football clubs in Scotland should be funded in the open, in a transparent fashion, and not through opaque sources. I do not believe Sevco is suddenly going to find millions of pounds stuffed down the side of an armchair, no more than I believe mysterious “investors” are suddenly going to appear to power forward the dreams of the Peepul … but if either of those things happen are clubs and the SFA going to sit idly by whilst Sevco pays for its next spending spree using sleight of hand? When is that club going to be held to the same rules as everyone else?
Alex McLeish raised the hackles of this writer last week when he said that the gap between the two clubs is proof that “the playing fields is not level.” As I explained – or tried to explain – to a lot of people who simply weren’t getting it, the term itself does not mean that one side has greater resources than another, it means that everyone plays by the same set of rules. The term itself literally originates with the “sloped pitch” … it’s the very reason teams change sides at half time, so that such “advantages” are negated by regulations.
The problem is, there are, at present, no regulations to prevent Sevco from funding Gerrard from other than legitimate sources because the clubs in Scotland have never been subjected to “break even” requirements. These rules exist, where they do, for the protection of the game itself. They exist to stop clubs spending their way to oblivion, but they also exist to protect the integrity of the sport. UEFA enforces them. Most of the top European countries have adopted them and put them into their league voluntarily … but we won’t.
And it’s that failure that condemns clubs like Hibs, Aberdeen, Hearts and others to the status of also-rans as Sevco funds itself through debts and God knows what else.
Yes, it’ll catch up to them and in a time not too distant … in the meantime, though, are these clubs and their fans really prepared to lose money, to lose a shot at winning things, to miss out on Europe? When these clubs already voluntarily adhere to FFP guidelines?
You are operating with a hand tied behind your back, because the unscrupulous leaders at Ibrox don’t worry about quaint little ideas like that; unless rules are in place to stop them they are going to continue to outspend you and rub your face in it. If Sevco was forced to do what your clubs do, and break even, they wouldn’t even be in the top four.
A fool is someone who keeps on doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. At Ibrox they barely follow the rules that already exist … there are holes in the current regulations that allow them to do as they please. It is not Celtic who will ultimately suffer for this; our turnover is three times what theirs is and we have, at least, tried to reform the game.
The onus is on the fans of the clubs who do suffer.
If they aren’t bothered, frankly I don’t know why the rest of us should be.
But some of us do care about the future of the sport.
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