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Sevco’s Bling Obsession Is Why We’ll Never Need To Worry About Them.

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Ibrox Noise. I can hear you laughing already, and you are right to be. Tonight they are awfully excited because the bookies have shortened the odds on Jermaine Defoe ending up at Ibrox. This is the same site that is giddy over the idea of Fernando Torres and Maxi Rodriguez and other ridiculous “possibilities.” Forget that all these guys would want massive salaries for a minute … think on what ambition it shows to be going for them.

They do believe it is ambition, of course. But this is all about bling. They haven’t considered, for one second, what the actual impact of such signings will be.

And my suspicion is that it would be very, very little.

We’ve heard this tune before and not just at Ibrox. Guys like Freddie Ljundberg, Thomas Gravesen, Carlton Cole, Colin Kazim Richards … they came up to Scotland thinking they could coast it and failed. They underestimate the quality of the opposition. They underestimate the sheer pace at which the game is played. They seem to think that players on the other teams will be overawed by their mere presence and thus roll over; there’s a misplaced arrogance with these guys.

Examples at Sevco are already numerous, and that club has only been around six years. Over the hill players signed for the lower league journey. Barton. Alves. Kranjcar. And it’s not limited to the over 30’s either. Warburton’s entire team building strategy was based on filling the team with lower league players from England, who he thought would dominate.

That’s not half as bad as this obsession with bling. In that case there was, at least, a plan; to buy footballers in their mid-twenties and sell them on later for a profit. The problem was that those players just weren’t very good, and there was no money to be made on them.

Sevco is a club operating completely without a plan. I am willing to bet that they sign at least two over 30 players in the summer; guys with no re-sale value, who’s pace has gone, who’s natural ability is in decline. Guys famous now only for a name.

If their club invested in scouting, if they were out signing players like Ntcham, if they were looking to grow their club rather than simply locking themselves into a quest to stop ten in a row whatever the cost to their club or their bank balance, they would be something to be wary of.

But this is what they do and what they look set to continue doing. We have nothing to worry about as long as Sky Sports Scouting is all they’ve got. That’s one thing about Gerrard; he knows his EPL footballers. Sadly for Sevco those who aren’t out of their reach are all over the hill. And this is the plan, and still I doubt they can pull it off.

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