There’s a moment in the 1986 film The Money Pit where Walter and Anna, the two central characters, are talking about the house they are thinking of buying, the one at the heart of the story, the one that will soon pull their lives apart. Walter wants to do it. Anna is wary of how much it costs; not that it’s too expensive but that it seems too cheap.
(She’s right to be concerned of course; within a few days of moving in, the front door has fallen off, the stairs have collapsed, the kitchen has exploded because of shonky wiring, the bath has crashed through its floor on an upper landing, the roof is leaking so badly that they have buckets positioned all around the house and every contractor they have called has turned the work down because they’ve already inspected the place and know it’s a disaster zone.)
Walter tries to explain to her that the house is cheap because they’ve arrived at it in precisely the right moment, and need to move fast. (Actually the place has been on the market for ages, but they don’t know that and won’t find it out until it’s too late.) To convince her, he gives her a little parable about a guy who spends hours on a busy freeway, stuck in the traffic, as he watches other drivers sail by on a lesser used road. “There has to be something wrong with it, right? Otherwise, everyone would be using it. But the road is fine,” he tells her.
The lesser used road is a lovely analogy, although it convinces her – it convinces them both – to make a horrible mistake.
And I was thinking about that scene this morning reading the papers and their incessant nonsense about how Sevco is on the verge of yet another investment moonbeam. It dawned on me; our club has not reached its full potential. Some say it can’t whilst we play in Scotland. But I am moved to wonder if it’s because our board just isn’t trying hard enough.
I mean, the papers make this all sound so easy. Sevco fans do too. They are so convinced that the big money is on the way that it makes me wonder why we never get stories like this. If there are people looking for a Scottish club to invest in, why isn’t it ours? Are our board just incompetent? Have they even looked out there for these folks?
The media writes so convincingly about them that they must exist.
So why’s our board asleep at the wheel?
Why aren’t we heading down the lesser used road? Why do we insist on building infrastructure and moving towards sustainability when there are mugs out there who are willing to write cheques on the never-never in exchange for basking in the warm glow of gratitude from otherwise ignorant and ungrateful football supporters?
You never read of how “Celtic are seeking fresh investment to give Brendan Rodgers a war chest” and I want to know why not. Why is our PR not up to the task of feeding the media stories of that sort, and would the media write them if we did?
To Hell with Sevco fans and their egotistical “going for 55” pish. Come and give us your money and indulge our much greater fantasy of winning the Champions League instead. Is that not something our board can sell? Are they just too lazy to try?
Clearly, I am joking. Clearly I do not believe our board is asleep at the wheel. I know full well that if there was a short-cut to riches and to building a team that we would have found it. It is contemptible that the media keeps on pushing this line about “investment” coming in to Ibrox when we would be a better bet, by far, but don’t consider looking for it.
And why don’t we? It’s not because of laziness, I can tell you that. It’s because it would be futile. Nobody is out there with money burning a hole in his or her pocket and who just can’t wait to sink it all into a West of Scotland football club. We’d be as well handing every director a metal detector and sending them prospecting on the beach.
Walter’s idea of a “lesser used road” is a nonsense. It’s the same fantasy that everyone who was ever looking for a shortcut clings to. Even if they existed, before long everyone would be on them and they would be just as clogged as every other road.
To believe in all this “Sevco are set to announce millions in investment” cobblers is to believe that they know something the rest of the world doesn’t know. That they’ve figured out the secrets of alchemy, of turning base metal into gold. We have genuine world-class businessmen on the board. We regularly post profits. Our club competes at the highest level in the Champions League Groups. And we cannot find people willing to give money to us for free.
Sevco don’t want “investors”. They want people to give them something for nothing; that’s charity they are thinking of. That’s Santa Claus.
And at Celtic Park we live with reality.
We do not indulge in flights of fancy.
We do not chase moonbeams.
I am forever thankful for it.
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