If you were looking at the papers this morning, either in print or online, you cannot have failed to notice the ludicrous story of how Sevco are facing down an auction for Josh Windass, a player they gave a brand new contract to just a few months ago.
I actually laughed reading that story because it clearly didn’t just emerge from nowhere; this is the start of the summer sales season at Ibrox, when the imperative to get people out the door is clear. They gave him a new deal to increase his value. It won’t do much good. He isn’t worth £3 million no matter how many years he has left at Ibrox.
In truth, Sevco will be lucky to get one third of that moment but it’s important for them to generate as much interest in him as they can, hence the “auction” stories this morning. Cardiff are alleged to want him; there is no way they will fork out that kind of money for a player the club so very clearly wants to ship out the door.
Windass is probably the most one dimensional footballer in Scotland. This guy has been a running joke since the day he arrived here, from Accrington Stanley. The papers talked about how Arsenal had been interested in him; it’s a little hard to believe they couldn’t scrape together the £60,000 that Sevco found to secure his signature.
Now, with Burnley allegedly joining Cardiff in the hunt, he’s a £3 million player? Has anybody in Scotland seen any sign of it?
And all this is vital of course, and Jimmy Nicholl confirmed that today when he told the media that Gerrard’s team building plans are going to be dependent on who the club ships out the door. In short, before he can spend proper money the club is going to have to sell people and that means finding clubs who are willing to buy their over-priced dreck.
I keep on saying this and yet the stories keep on popping up; there is no pot of gold for this guy. Gerrard didn’t sign on because of promises of tens of millions of pounds. He arrogantly believes the SPL can be won by “beating Celtic a couple of times” and that a squad can be assembled to do so for relative peanuts. He has covered his backside with a four-year deal. Anyone who assumes he would not have gone there without guarantees … either he didn’t get them or somebody lied. If somebody lied we’ll soon know because he’s working on a shoestring.
Nicholl has spelled out the reality here. I know Sevco fans are highly resistant to it, but this is coming from one of their own, from inside the club. I am not making this up.
“If he gets more out of the group we have at the moment then he may only need three or four players,” Nicholl said. “It would be a lot better if he only needed that many in. Players probably haven’t produced what their capable of consistently. He might get it out of them. When Graeme Souness came in he bought Terry Butcher, Chris Woods and there was myself and him. He didn’t turn around and bring in eight, nine or 10 players to change things around.”
This is a warning from upstairs, and in case it wasn’t clear enough Nicholl went on.
“That tells you there was enough in the club at that moment to turn things around adding three or four. So if the new managers comes in and says he needs eight or nine players to turn this around that will take time but he’ll get the time.”
Except that Gerrard won’t get the time, and I suspect he knows it himself, which is why he’s not moving his family up to Scotland. Everything about this screams “short term”, including some of the ridiculous transfer names being linked in the media, as barmy as they are with not one of them being under 33. Nobody at Ibrox is thinking about a work in progress here.
The writing is already on the wall.
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