Tonight, Dave King took Sevco’s summer of shame to yet another new low.
Tonight he issued another statement out of Ibrox redolent of bigotry, paranoia and vindictiveness. It was unprofessional to a degree which is astounding. It was also self-defeating in a big, big way. So, the Ibrox board has a new-found enthusiasm for independent inquiries? That will be something to take note of, and use to our advantage, at a later date.
Earlier this week I argued against the SFA non executive board member Gary Hughes trying to hang onto his job. I thought it was a distraction that Ian Maxwell didn’t need. I also suggested that there were issues which would later on be worth dying in the ditch for.
Tonight, King has made this one of them. But in making fresh demands for suspensions and investigations he’s also made the SFA’s decision over Hughes relatively easy.
The body that represents the clubs has stood by its man. They’ve dismissed King’s demand and made it look like exactly what it is; hypocritical ranting from a crook and a liar and they’ve politely, but firmly, told him to find a corner, sit down in it like a wee boy, and shut it.
If the SFA throws its own man to the wolves that’s going to make them look weak. Taken in isolation, Hughes should not have survived. Taken in tandem with this, it’s a exactly what I said it was the other day; it’s part of an orchestrated campaign and that changes the rules. Hughes has to stand up and fight, and the SFA has to back him.
This is now worth dying in the ditch for.
I hate being right at times.
Earlier in the week, when I wrote the Hughes articles, I said that it wasn’t a one-off, that whoever leaked it to the media had gone looking for dirt. I predicted that they were still out there and that there would be more of it. But I also said King’s heavy-handed response had been badly misjudged and overplayed. Tonight, it’s even more apparent that this is a purposeful campaign against the governing bodies. King could not have made that any clearer if he tried.
And you have to ask yourselves, “why?”
Why now? Why here? Why go after them this hard, this fast?
A lot of our supporters harboured real doubts about Ian Maxwell, and thought that his tenure at the SFA would be simply more of the same, but look at the reaction out of Ibrox. That club is throwing its weight around and testing the boundaries of what’s acceptable like never before, and there are various ways and means by which that can be dealt with.
King and his board believe change has come to Hampden, and it’s the sort that makes them afraid. It is real transparency, real accountabiity, no favouritism … just the following of the rules, the scrupulous adherence to the letter of them. Every club treated the same.
On Friday, Steven Gerrard walks through the Ibrox doors … those of a Sevco persusasion believe the world will be watching. Some of it will be. And those who look closely at the last few days will see a club run more like a crime family, enacting vendattas, issuing hits, behaving with no regard whatsoever for the wider game. It is a grotesque spectacle, and most will be appalled.
And they will wonder, and so should Gerrard, what exactly he’s gotten himself into.
Tonight also forces even his doubters to tip a hat in the direction of Phil MacGiollabhian; he has been saying since the Gerrard thing was announced that this is now the Dave King Show we’re watching, that his opponents on the board have been well and truly silenced and sidelined and surely now not one person can deny that.
Sevco is not behaving like a rational business. Short term headine chasing and here-and-now thinking are stoking up enormous resentment and trouble for the future. They are creating problems at a time when they don’t need more of them and anyone who thinks this is a club acting from a position of strength is quite simply a fool. It is a desperate stuff.
We are in the endgame, and if the SFA truly wants to put this man in his place then it ought to open an immediate investigation into his own fit and proper bona fides. Because this man is currently openly defying a court order and if he were at any other club there would be consequences for that.
That man is on a mission to spark a full-scale war with the governing bodies, in which they hold all the heavy weapons. I understand holding your fire before the shooting starts, but it’s started now and it was King himself who started it.
Consider, for one moment, who Scottish football is dealing with here; a notorious liar, a crook, a charlatan, a braggart, a blowhard.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s now fair game and if the administrators shoot they can’t miss.
It’s time this mad dog was put down, for the good of the whole sport.