In the aftermath of what this site called Beautiful Sunday, the Hampden smashing of Sevco, the majority of their supporters went fully nuts as the truth about the state they are in became clear to even the most delusional amongst them. Their season was over. Celtic seemed to be on the brink of an historical double treble. We were due to visit Celtic Park in short order and their entire club was paralysed by fear of what that might entail.
It turned into a massacre of biblical proportions. I was disappointed, we all were, that it only finished five. And it sparked something that had long laid dormant in the Sevco fan base. A deep-seated hatred for their own club, which soon bubbled over.
Fan organisations released scorching statements. At the heart of all of them was distrust of one man; Dodgy Dave King, the glib and shameless chairman, notorious liar and tax criminal. It seemed that they’d finally woken up to the truth about exactly who this man is.
Today, all that opposition has been replaced by wild adulation. Euphoria, even. King is the hero of the hour. Their fans are almost unified in loving the guy. And as much as I think he’s a reprehensible son of a bitch who shouldn’t be near a Scottish club I have to take my hat off to him for the way he’s turned the trick. It should be no easy feat to turn an entire fan-base around so quickly, but he has definitely managed it. But how has he done it?
There are two strands to this; first, King has the psychopath’s love of risk taking and he is perfectly willing to roll the dice on high risk approaches to problem solving. Not only does he feel like he can get away with anything, he doesn’t particularly care who else is hurt in the process. If other people or institutions gets trampled on, well that’s just their hard lines.
They are nothing to King. Collateral damage in his grand schemes.
King is an egotist, a man about as arrogant and full of himself as it’s possible to be. And he is shameless with it, as all psychopaths are. He can embrace wholescale contradiction without blinking. He can reverse himself on issues. He can brass-neck his way through an entire press conference where not one word of truth escapes his lips. A like Donald Trump, Dave King doesn’t feel bad about it in the slightest.
He uses people for his own ends too.
His board members have been blackmailed into keeping on the lights thus far, although some are now saying they won’t play ball. This very week, he used a Scottish journalist to spread a palpably untrue story, which was soon revealed to be a lie. We’ll get to that, but do you think Chris Jack got an apology for that using? Of course not.
King is a reckless braggart with a self-regard that’s in the stratosphere, but there’s just one problem with him. He doesn’t have the intelligence or the guile to back any of it up. He stumbles into fights he has no way to win. His ludicrous game of chicken with Mike Ashley is just one case in point. He’s now locked in a struggle to the death with the Takeover Panel.
And off and on the field at Ibrox, trouble is mounting up everywhere.
But still, he’s getting away with it and selling season tickets … based on lies and bluff and bluster and bullying other people. Who would swallow this?
Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it, and we all know the answer.
Only Sevco supporters would have bought into the nonsense of the last few weeks, and they have bought in all the way. The mood amongst them is buoyant, although you ask them why and see what kind of answers you get. They are full of praise for King’s “taking on the SFA” and his actions in cutting our ticket allocation. The Skrtel story was supposed to show that they were ambitious and trying to sign big name footballers. Gerrard’s appointment has been spun as “box office” and the fans have bought into all of it.
But what’s the truth?
Gerrard has never managed a senior level match in his life, and his “box office” credentials were as a player. If he had taken a job in the EPL every journalist down there would be calling it a risk. The hype surrounding it has been utterly nonsensical.
The Skrtel story collapsed, and with it the idea that Gerrard was going to be handed a massive transfer budget with which to build his dream team. The player’s agent made it abundantly clear that the club had come up well short and that they were seriously limited in what they were able to offer. That blows the Gerrard fantasy to smithereens and confirms that their rookie boss will be going head to head with Brendan with much of the current team.
The ticket allocation farce has blown up already with Celtic’s reciprocal action. Eight thousand of their own fans have been screwed over. They will now have to travel to the toughest ground in the league virtually without fans, even as we travel to Ibrox knowing we can win there regardless. And all this assumes that the police allow them to do this in the first place, as it’s not a lock. Because according to King himself (I know, I know) the club’s safety certificate was dependent on them keeping us in the Broomloan Road stand.
As to King taking on the SFA, this is the mark of a club that knows there will be a negative result in the 2011 licence case and perhaps fears bad news over the UEFA license for next season and who are determined to spin that as some kind of conspiracy against them. They anticipate bad news and are furiously trying to spin it in advance. Their fans can paint this is the club “fighting back” as they will; that does no good if it’s a fight they won’t win.
All this euphoria is built on shifting sands. It’s supported by nothing.
Apparently, that’s good enough for their fans.
King must love dealing with these Peepul.