The things our media will do to sustain the nonsense it runs almost defy belief. They can print a story one day that is a transparent falsehood and the very next day run an even more outrageous story to support the previous days lie.
Usually I can spot the agenda. This time it’s a little difficult to do, because the media is running stories about Jamie Murphy being Gerrard’s third signing and every single person in Scotland knows that is absolute cobblers.
The first signing was Scott Arfield; he had been on Sevco’s radar for months before the deal was done. Their interest in him was first touted shortly after the New Year when Murty and the club still thought they had a chance to win the title. Arfield was free to talk to clubs from that point on and it’s pretty clear the deal had been in the pipeline a while.
The second deal was for Allan McGregor and nobody is going to tell me that Gerrard was behind that one. It’s another deal which was clearly hatched within Ibrox itself; he is the quintessential Real Rangers Man, even if he didn’t fancy playing for Sevco the last time the chance came along. There’s no way that Steven Gerrard went to Mark Allen’s office and said “Let’s go to Hull and sign Allan McGregor on a free transfer.” It’s ridiculous.
And the third deal, completed today, for Jamie Murphy … again, only an idiot believes that he’s the sort of player Gerrard would have chosen himself. Nor is Jason Cummings who they are believed to be talking to Forest about. These were two of last season’s loanees, and much good did they do the club, unless you mean in helping them “secure” third place.
Gerrard was not consulted about these deals except at the point when they were just about done. The capture of Arfield and McGregor considerably swells an already bursting wage bill, and not one player has left the club.
Nonsense talk about millions being bid for Windass – a player who is derided and mocked on their own websites as a 30 minute footballer and who is useless thereafter – and for the equally useless Tavernier will never come to anything and you can say with some certainty that there’s nobody out there daft enough to buy Morelos for more than £2 million.
They are stuck with these guys, along with other dreck like Herrera, Cardozo and (hilariously) Carlos Pena. Alves has a year of his deal left and rumours persist that they’re going to try and secure Russell Martin, which sort of puts the garbage the press is running about Skrtel into some kind of perspective. Gerrard will not want any of those guys, but he is stuck with them unless the club can find mugs daft enough to take them off their hands.
The best Gerrard got on these deals was to give them the nod after the fact.
I doubt that Allen even paid him the respect of asking him before concluding the business, and this might well be the model these two men work to. Gerrard will run the training and the dressing room … Allen will do the rest.
And that doesn’t give the ex-Liverpool player the clout that someone like Brendan does. He won’t, of course, but it’s important that the illusion be presented of an iron man who will have command of all that he surveys. I just don’t know who it’s supposed to fool because anyone who looks at this without the heavy blue tinted specs knows what it is. Few, except for the very dumbest amongst their support, are buying any of this.
Yet I wonder how many have twigged what it means.
For all the talk of him being a big name, there are people inside the club who know giving the job to this rookie was madness.
They have him on the leash already.