I read Barry Ferguson’s latest column this morning with something akin to wonderment. I mean that honestly, I felt that kind of bewildered amazement people reserve for when they see someone doing something so off the reservation that they think “he’s gone off his nut. Does he even know he’s doing that? Surely he can’t.”
But he can.
This is Bazza. And although he’s clearly aware of his surroundings and knows we’ll all be ripping the piss out of him for this, he’s turned in copy so barmy and sounding so redolent of madness that it had crossed even the line of satire. Mad Magazine would have binned it without even sending a formal rejection slip.
The article is about Gerrard, of course, and the players he could sign.
“OK, we all know there are something like 85,000 reasons a week why the likes of Jermain Defoe won’t end up at Ibrox this summer,” he writes, with complete understatement. “But there’s one even bigger reason why they might. And that reason is Steven Gerrard … When the man on the other end of the line is a someone of the calibre and standing of Gerrard you have no choice but to hear him out. His name alone demands it. It’s a conversation that would excite the vast majority of players in Britain right now. And the question, “Aye but how much money is in it?”would be pretty far down their list.”
I am not joking. He actually wrote that, turned it in, and the paper published it.
According to Ferguson, it won’t be about money.
It will be about glory.
It will be about the chance to play for the Great Man himself.
And even if you consider that for a lot of these guys it is about the money, and that Sevco has none of it, you have to wonder about the rest of the argument.
Because first, what the article – and many others – overlook is the fact that these players aren’t that much younger than Gerrard and have their own giant egos … they are not, in any way, star-struck. To read some of the alleged reporting, you’d think these guys were goo-goo and gaga and the thought of getting to play under him.
But why would they be?
What has Gerrard done in management to be worthy of that gushing respect? Nothing whatsoever. Any of these players who has his own ambitions of coaching is just as experienced as Gerrard is. This is a guy who as accomplished exactly zero in the dugout.
Secondly, what is this glory to which Ferguson refers? The chance to win trophies is all it is here, a chance, a slim one at that. And certainly not a league title, which is so far beyond them that he might as well tell any prospective signing that on the opening day of talks.
I love all this. I love the build-up this is all getting. I love knowing that the expectation bubble is being swelled to monumental proportions and that it’s going to burst like a balloon. Just reading some of the utter insanity doing the rounds is enough to make you laugh uproariously.
33 year old Martin Skrtel for £4 million? 35 year old Jermain Defoe on loan? Joining a Canadian international and the goalie who walked out on them when they were told they were starting in the bottom tier? This is the plan, is it? This would just be like pouring money down the drain to no obvious benefit. It’s a joke, right? Is Skrtel better than their current Portuguese superstar Alves, who we were told would be dominant or – and how could we forget him – Philippe Senderos? I’ve written before that Sevco’s obsession with bling is dangerous and costly … I see nothing in their transfer business so far that worries me even a little.
The pace of the game up here is too fast for a lot of players in their prime; Musonda just headed back to Chelsea in spite of being an outstanding young talent who had played a season on loan in La Liga. Reputations mean nothing up here.
In the meantime, in the real world, they’ve opened talks to keep Jason Cummings at the club.
Notts Forest are not putting up a fight.
This is the actual level of their reach.
This is as far as they’re going to be able to go.