Anyone who was expecting fireworks between Ian Maxwell and Dave King was definitely not paying attention in class. Anyone who expected war to break out doesn’t know the difference between a man like the Sevco chairman and the man in the CEO’s office at Hampden.
King blusters because he has to, because there’s no inner logic to what he does.
Maxwell is a professional.
Maxwell has skills.
To use a famous Gordon Gekko-ism he doesn’t just “throw darts at a board.”
His statement today said everything it needed to and nothing at all. King will get a meeting. The same meeting anyone else would get, as Maxwell made perfectly plain. He treats everyone the same, this isn’t Sevco getting special favours as some will try to spin it. Maxwell defended the independence of the current board, and his offer of a wee coffee and a chat was a million miles from the inquiry Dave King has been making all the noise about.
There will be no inquiry. King will get his half hour or whatever and Maxwell will see him to the door and the new CEO will get down to doing the job.
I’m not saying this proves we’re in a new era of Scottish football, but King has got no more today than any other director at any other club who wanted to raise an issue would get; he didn’t need a megaphone to get this, he just needed to pick up the telephone.
But he had a gallery to play to, and so to them this will be painted as a big win.
This will be spun as a victory.
But King wasn’t in a fight except with himself. Maxwell is way too smart to engage. I think the low key way he’s handled it is probably the right one. He had to say something, and perhaps even show a little flex. It’s sober, and it’s sensible.
To have gone in with guns blazing would have given King just what he wanted prior to the Resolution 12 case; an excuse to tell the world the SFA was at war with his club.
Maxwell sounds and looks reasonable, and relaxed.
As I said the other day, there’s tactics and there’s strategy.
Only one of those two men is playing the long game, probably because only one of them really has a chance of being around for the end of it.