Right on cue, Sevco answered the SFA’s citation from Friday night with yet another bizarre statement, one of those ones written as if by a capering, gibbering loon in a secure unit. Yet in the midst of the madness they did hit on one truth that should discomfit Scottish football.
“It is concerning that it seems the governing body is seeking to hold (us) to a different and more stringent code of conduct than that applied to others,” their statement read. Part of that statement is correct, just not the end part.
Sevco is treated differently; that’s surely no longer even up for debate.
Its players, its manager, its fans, its chairman … the governing bodies give them a free pass on such a regular basis that the club is swollen with a sense of entitlement so total that whenever something goes against it the reaction is like that of a spoiled child being denied treats. The toys get thrown everywhere, and their sense of victimhood – never far from the surface anyway – explodes, shrieking, and demanding that the cruelty end.
The SFA has done this to itself, by a policy of constant pandering and soft-touch handling of issues involving that club.
Every parent knows that at some point in a child’s personal growth that you have to draw a line and stop giving in to his or her every whim or you’re giving yourself problems that will last years if you are lucky, and probably much longer.
Take King for instance; that man has hung on in there as chairman when Fit and Proper person tests should have deprived him of the spot in the first place and who’s conduct in office should have given the governing body every chance it needed to correct the mistake. When his takeover was found to have been in violation of City of London regulations that should have been that. They did nothing. His numerous breaches of commercial contracts gave them another opportunity to swing the axe. They did nothing. The cold shouldering was the point where I think all of us expected them to step in, because how could they not? But they did nothing.
Their supporters have gotten away with murder down through the years, and the SFA has hidden behind weak regulations which allow the club the leeway to do nothing of substance to contain the toxicity. As a consequence, their official shareholder’s organisation has all the class of one of those “services” you get from business cards taped to the inside windows of telephone booths, and all the morality of an alleyway mugger.
When Gerrard, five minutes in the job, alleged that Scottish football had an issue with his club and accused the SFA of bias, they should have clipped his wings the same day. Instead they ignored his remarks and thus made a rod for their own backs.
And Morelos and others have gotten away with just as much in this campaign. The Colombian ned has been begging for a red for months now and it’s the ultimate irony than he got the two he has for gesturing at the crowd and diving when there were plenty of opportunities to card him for far more serious offences, including the attack on Christie at Ibrox.
He is not the only Ibrox player given license to maim and what have you this season, but his example is the most egregious.
Everyone knows that Sevco’s boast about his improved discipline is a convenient shield on the truth; refs are reluctant to punish him, and that’s only going to be become harder for them to do as Sevco ramps up this lunatic campaign alleging that there is some kind of campaign to make him a social outcast in Scotland.
Sevco is treated with more leniency than any other club in Scotland, and because they have been their sense of being somehow above the rules, of being outside of the scope of the regulations which govern everyone else, has led them to explosions of anger whenever they are held to the standards which do bind every other club in the land.
Their statement is bitter, angry … and utterly insane.
Those in the media crying the blues on their behalf understand quite well that these citations are absolutely toothless and feeble.
Yet Sevco still acts as if they are the victims of a great and terrible wrong.
You have to understand, Sevco really does feel that a grave injustice has been done here.
That club is a perfect manifestation of the sociopathic personality, and one of the standout traits of that disorder is a sense of personal grievance that runs deep.
When they wail and bitch and moan and shriek that the world is against them they really do feel that, and they really do believe it.
It’s all the more reason that they should be confronted; you don’t make a crazy person better by indulging his fantasies.
The problem here is that their paranoia and sense of superiority has been indulged already, and for far too long.
Solving that will require standing up to them and putting them in their place … I fear that the SFA has no stomach for that job at all.
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