Chris Jack’s latest piece is an affront to Scottish football journalism.
It is an opinion piece whose opinion would have been no more nonsensical if he were nothing but a sock puppet with Jim Traynor’s hand up his posterior.
That might not be far from the truth here.
Headlined “Questions over Murdoch MacLennan are key for all clubs and not just Rangers” it is a piece of excreta which again demonstrates that he is not a serious person in a serious profession, but a Sevco PR stooge who is paid by a national newspaper.
I would say his bosses should punt him, as he’s certainly not working for them, but as his direct superior is Neil Cameron I won’t hold my breath.
The article is astonishing.
It drips paranoia.
The reek of madness wafts off the page.
When I asked yesterday what Sevco was going to do now that the SPFL had told King to go and sit in the corner and stop being an eejit I had a feeling that they would roll out some of their flunkies, some of their yes-men, to help them howl at the moon, and I wasn’t disappointed.
They brought their best. Or their worst, depending on your point of view.
For 95% of the time, Jack is the crème-de-la-crème of Sevco boot-lickers.
The other 5% of the time his tongue is busily lodged in someone at Ibrox’s arse.
“(Sevco) may be leading the calls for MacLennan’s head due to his business links with two Celtic powerbrokers but the issues over his position should be looked at by clubs across the country,” he writes in an early paragraph.
But why should they?
This issue bothers exactly one club and it’s the ranting, raving, lunatic one at Ibrox.
This matter has been looked at.
MacLennan declared his appointment at the time, and as most of the SPFL board is made up of people who actually work for the clubs the idea that there is some kind of conflict here is a joke.
There is a wilful difficulty to comprehend this issue with the Sevco board, and some of the hacks in their orbit.
Scottish football is not run for the benefit of Celtic.
I challenge them, I challenge anyone, to produce the smallest scrap of evidence that it is.
What do these lunatics think we’re going to do with this power, with this influence, they claim that we suddenly have?
Relegate Sevco?
Take all the TV money for ourselves?
Vote ourselves a goal of a start in every match?
Exactly what is it that they are afraid of?
Is it inquiries into historical wrong-doing that bother them?
I defy anyone who at this moment in time is screaming – as Jack appears to be – for inquiries into far less weighty matters to tell us that we are wrong about that.
Are they worried that there might, finally, be justice for the scandal of Rangers last European license?
That is a partisan position, and we should not take seriously anyone who claims that we are wrong to be seeking it.
Celtic shareholders want this, and they have a legal right to the answers which neither Jack nor anyone else can deny.
Writing about King as if he were some kind of crusader instead of a brazen liar and a crook who ought not to be within a million miles of a football club, Jack has lamented the lack of support amongst other clubs for what he’s trying to achieve.
“It is (a battle) that he has fought alone in public so far, however. Where (Sevco) have led, no others have followed as shots have been launched back and forth with no sign of being intercepted by friendly fire, or otherwise, from elsewhere.”
I don’t even know what the end of that sentence means.
It’s like someone took what he wrote, translated it into Mandarin, then into Albanian, into German and then into English again.
That is “Shitty Writing 101.”
A first year journalism student would be ashamed of it.
But the gist of it seems to be that nobody is helping them.
And of course nobody is.
Because Sevco are engaged in a smear job here, they are not looking for answers to serious questions, they are libelling somebody and trying to drive him out of office because of some perceived bias, although they cannot demonstrate any evidence of it.
If Sevco looks alone it’s because nobody is prepared to crawl out on the limb with them.
These next bits are especially important to an understanding of what Jack is up to here, and who’s dangling him on the end of the strings; dirty hands, I’ll wager, and tanned from being in the South African sun too long.
“If MacLennan informed Neil Doncaster, the SPFL chief executive, of his role with INM and highlighted the links with Desmond and O’Brien then his conscience is clear,” Jack writes, as if this was a guy who had tried to cover up a murder. “If Doncaster was told, as he should have been, then those details had to be passed onto to the SPFL Board, of which Robertson is a member. If both of those processes had been followed completely to the letter, it is unfathomable to see how we could have reached this point and how (Sevco) could have become so irked.”
I can tell you exactly why they are irked.
Anti-Irish hate and paranoia are rampant at Ibrox and the merest hint that this guy knows people at Celtic Park has driven them off their nuts.
“Whether there is a conflict of interest or not, and there is no suggestion whatsoever that MacLennan has acted improperly in his dealings, that is only one issue,” Jack writes, and it’s the one honest thing in the whole dishonest piece.
Because there is absolutely zero evidence to support the idea that MacLennan is compromised or has acted in a way that is detrimental to his role. It is a disgrace for a national journalist to write so many words that suggest otherwise before slipping that admission in to protect himself and his paper from the legal action that would otherwise be certain.
This is my favourite bit.
“The details of a Private Eye article on MacLennan have yet to be addressed by the man who was appointed in July but has rarely been seen in public.”
First, what does “has rarely been seen in public” mean?
Is Jack implying this guy spends all his time in the house, or what?
Is he suggesting that News 24 follow the guy everywhere so that people know who he is?
MacLennan is not a public figure, and this insinuation that he is in hiding or should be happy to play for the cameras is risible.
Where is the similar criticism of SFA President Alan McRae, a guy I could be standing next to in a pub and not recognise for a second?
How long has he been in office?
If you looked up The Man Who Wasn’t There it would be his picture you’d see, only no-one would know it.
That MacLennan’s lack of a public profile is an issue now is frankly pathetic.
And Private Eye?
For God’s sake.
That sound you hear is the bottom of the barrel being well and truly scraped clean.
I am willing to bet that Jack had no clue whatsoever about the Private Eye piece until I mentioned it in an article over the weekend; it’s another example of lazy journalism at its running worst. And I won’t report on what it says because it’s a piece of absolute tittle-tattle, an un-sourced quote of the sort a blog wouldn’t even run.
But if Jack is interested in Private Eye and in raking through their back issues looking for something relevant to the moment he could do worse than check this tit-bit out.
“A curious silence amongst most of the Scottish media greeted the recent publication ‘Doing SFA For Fair Play’ by the Offshore Game website,” it starts out.
The Scottish media.
That would include this Sevco stenographer.
The piece is interesting because it expounds on some current issues and is very much dealing with the good of the game.
It discusses how the Offshore Game report “detailed from internal documents how the Scottish Premier League inquiry into Rangers’ use of undisclosed employment benefit trusts (EBTs) to pay players had either been misled or misled itself, and how subsequently the Scottish Football Association had ignored Rangers’ related EBT problems with the taxman to allow the financially struggling club to compete in the 2011-12 Champions League, contrary to UEFA rules.””
And that, as you can see, is very relevant to where we are right now.
I look forward to his expansive article on the subject once Traynor takes his hand out of you know where.
Jack goes on to say that;
“Perceptions cannot be altered but the SPFL had a chance to properly address (Sevco’s) concerns and didn’t take it. For some, their actions speak louder than their words.”
And those “some” are screaming in the darkness because they refuse to accept that this is a complete non-issue.
The SPFL has looked into it. It’s going nowhere.
The way Jack and the media have focused on it whilst ignoring other glaring, massive, monumental goings on in the game is telling and damns them.
He closes with this beauty.
“That could also be said about other clubs that have watched on as the statement war has unfolded and have chosen to stay in their bunkers rather than put their heads above the parapet in public. When the position of the SPFL chairman has been called into question, that issue becomes bigger than Sevco v Celtic or King v Doncaster. If clubs don’t show their colours, only grey areas will remain.”
What bollocks.
Other clubs are staying out of this because only one club actually cares.
As the rest know it’s a complete hatchet job and a witch-hunt with sectarian overtones they will steer well clear of it.
And the phrase “show their colours” is pretty blatant.
He might as well ask “who’s side are you all on?”
But he doesn’t have to, because the inference is there all the way through the reeking rancid article itself.
This is Sevco’s roll of the dice, to try to shame other clubs into jumping aboard their bandwagon, which Jack is content to pull for them like a rented mule.
He no longer cares how it makes him look; like an idiot who can’t find his village.
I’ll give him a clue; it’s the one painted blue, white and red.
What a disgrace to journalism you are, Chris Jack.