There are times I think I’ve been doing this too long.
Times when I think I’m slipping.
For much of last year I pondered the issue of how Sevco would explain to their fans that Morelos would be leaving the club for far less than the transfer fee they’ve allegedly slapped on his head and which they know they have no chance whatsoever of realising.
I’ve laughed at them over this, but the joke was on me all this time and I really should have known that it would be. Because of course they have a story all worked out and it’s the same old story. It’s the Victim Myth, exploded to momentous proportions and projected onto the player.
They are gearing up to announce his departure “for his own good.”
They are going to claim that they sold him short of his fee because he had to get out of Scotland, the country which hates him, and which would have driven him to consider quitting the game entirely. Their own failure, their lunacy at believing they could command a Dembele style transfer fee for a player who simply isn’t worth that kind of money, is going to be dressed up as altruism and their fans are going to swallow it whole … and blame us for it.
You can see this narrative starting to take shape, and it makes perfect sense that it would. It’s the way of the world. It’s Trump, blaming the Democrats for his own behaviour and which led to his becoming the third President in history impeached by the House.
It’s Johnson, getting ready to blame the EU for the hard Brexit he and his people have lusted for from the first.
The Blame Game works.
Gullible fools who want to believe in their own glorious leaders and who don’t want to see their failings eat it up like fine dining.
Like the aforementioned politicians, Sevco is the author of its own misfortune here.
They have priced him out of the move he wants and which they need, pandering to deluded fools in their fan-base who can’t understand why we can get mega-bucks for players and they can’t. Rather than just explain it to them in simple terms – “their players are better than ours, and have won things” – they prefer to lie.
There is safety in lying. It covers a multitude of sins, at least until you get caught. At which point you have to do spin control. How better than by telling more lies?
If I were in their shoes, unscrupulous, desperate, not caring that such a narrative would shame our league, our game and our country, not bothered that it will feed rampant paranoia and hate amongst the support … well, it’s the strategy I would use.
I’ve been turning the idea over in my head for the past week – I think I even hinted at in a blog. But it was E-Tims who brought it full circle in their article today, and pretty much said “this is what they are up to.” I applaud them for doing so.
It took me forever to see this, although I knew there had to be something. The high probability that we’re watching the last of Morelos in this league made it vital they started working on their excuse, and it’s looking like they’re going full tilt at it.
It is difficult to adequately express how angry I feel over the cynicism that lies behind such a stratagem.
The idea that a player was “chased” out of Scotland by a hate mob is potentially destructive.
Yet you can tell that some in the media are already embracing it; I come back, again, to Ralston’s piece before the game, which is one of the most loathsome and dishonest I’ve ever read. He would regurgitate this nonsense without hesitation; he half believes it already.
A lot of them do, and Sevco fans will embrace the idea because it justifies their hatred and their own conspiracy theory. So they could sell this, of course they could. Hell, you could sell anything to that support of theirs as long as it was coated in all this guff.
Watch as this story builds. “We are releasing Alfredo reluctantly because he no longer sees a future for himself in Scotland.”
It is so predictable I could write it for them.
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