Today some websites are reporting that Sevco will consider legal action in the event that the season is finished early and Celtic are awarded the title.
The clue is in the word “consider.”
That they would actually do this is such a remote possibility that I have trouble even writing about it with a straight face.
This is a game of chicken, all of it. It’s a bluff.
Sevco has spent enough time in enough courtrooms.
Any legal action they might consider has a number of dire consequences, none of which they can afford to invite. If they go outside the football system, they risk the full weight of UEFA coming down on them. If they try to do it within football, then they risk delaying the start of the next campaign even further.
Believe me when I tell you that Sevco will be doing neither of those things, because Sevco needs the football back as much as any club in the game, and more so since they are trying to plug holes right now. If their season ticket launch doesn’t go according to script – and really, it would have been a hard sell before this – they’ll bleed out in short order.
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You’ll notice that none of these reports come with an official statement; it’s the usual “off the record” briefings and anonymous sources. Any club that wants to object if the SPFL calls this thing – and the SPFL is going to have to – will need to do more than just grunt and snarl and talk about how unfair life and the meritocracy is.
They will need actual solid legal grounding. Which they don’t have.
The SPFL regulations specifically allow for the season to be cut short.
Hearts have already been told that if they object to being relegated they will have to prove that the decision was unfair or in some way biased; it will not be enough for they or the Peepul to scream about Catholic conspiracies and the role of the Unseen Fenian Hand in starting the virus.
What these off-record briefings do accomplish is to give the Sevco fans a shot in the arm, a genuine belief that their club is going to fight any decision that’s made here. They need that if they are to sell season tickets at all, as well as promoting this daft “membership scheme” of theirs, which they could not have possibly picked a worse time to attempt.
It’s posturing, and it’s not even very effective posturing.
The whole of football is in a holding pattern, and UEFA have made it worse with their daft attempts to get games back on the schedule. We’re at the start of April; even the best government estimates don’t see the lockdown being relaxed until the end of May at the earliest.
The idea that football will suddenly resume is for the birds, it really is.
I would love to think that we’ll be playing games by the end of May, that this will suddenly lift as quickly as it descended, but I don’t believe in fairies and I never really have.
We deal in reality here … and Sevco’s latest shot across the bow doesn’t worry me at all.
Are Sevco bluffing when they hint at taking legal action if we're made champions?Yes
No
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