You have to hand it to Sevco fans for an unerring ability to completely miss the significance of any given situation.
They are quite brilliant when it comes to seeing things the way they want to but no further than that. Today offers a quite superb case in point.
Over on their forums, they are cock-a-hoop at the announcement from Tynecastle that Hearts are to proceed with a legal action against the SPFL.
For a moment, let’s suspend our amazement at their being so happy that their own club’s position on all this has been exposed as a fraud and that that they are relying on someone else taking action instead, and let’s focus on the real issue here; that Hearts have just moved ahead with something that might bring the whole of Scottish football to a standstill.
I would imagine that many clubs live in dread at that prospect.
None of them can prevent this if Hearts follow through on this threat.
There is nothing, now, that the governing bodies can do to change where we are, with reconstruction being defeated and there being no appetite anywhere to spare any club from its fate when they are “negotiating” with guns drawn.
So if Hearts do this – and Budge has put herself in such a spot here with her own fans that I don’t see that they have much choice any longer – then we’re off to the races.
And it’s not impossible that this will freeze Scottish football in place long enough for clubs to die. Here’s what the Sevconuts have failed to grasp, and what Hearts fans are completely unable to understand. This could kill both of them.
Hearts are in enough trouble as it is.
Relegation would have taken a toll regardless, but the decision to hold off on games in the Championship for an extra month makes no sense to me and will cost them even more money. No fans in the grounds means that they’re already dicing with death. Now add to that court costs and SFA sanctions … it’s hard to see sense in this.
But if the whole game grinds to a halt Hearts are in peril of more than just administration, which you’d have to say is a virtual certainty at this point, and there go 15 points unless the SPFL is going to suspend its regulations on that, as some clubs appear to want.
Yet with Hearts in all kinds of trouble already I can sort of half understand the “devil may care” attitude that they can afford to take a shot at a court case and risk the consequences. If there was a chance of them winning, I’d get it completely.
But the SPFL has not put a foot wrong here in a legal sense.
They are protected not only by the votes of the clubs and their own internal investigation into the process that led to the vote but by their own regulations which expressly allow for shortening the season and confirming all standings and acting in accordance with them. It’s in their rulebook … all they’ve done is follow it.
Hearts position is barmy … but that’s nothing on the one Sevco fans are taking.
As this site has pointed out, no club of the top 100 in Europe is as uniquely poised to fall if things don’t return to normal soon as Sevco is. They are overly dependent on gate-money. They require season ticket sales and ancillary income if they are to survive at all.
They would already be on the brink of huge losses come what may, losses they can’t meet.
But if the start of the season is delayed, or the SPFL has to ring-fence money, if the actions of Hearts affect the game in even the slightest adverse way, the dominos will start to fall almost at once and one of those dominos is Sevco itself.
There is a reason their club hasn’t raised its own legal challenge to the SPFL voting process.
There is a reason why they tried to get their investigation through the SPFL members themselves instead of going down the courtroom route; they understand how ultimately futile that road is, but also how perilous. They understand that such action would endanger their survival.
Sevco fans are celebrating Hearts taking action which, if successful, might have dire consequence for their own club.
If you ever wanted an example of their utter stupidity revealed this is surely it.
This is the anniversary of Liquidation Day, when the formal process to wind up Rangers got underway … it is somehow brilliant to see Sevco fans high-fiving each other all over the forums over something that might well send their current club down that same path.
You could not make this stuff up, friends and neighbours.
As Scottish football goes through the current crisis it is important to keep up with developments and the key issues. We are determined to do so, and to keep you informed as well. Please subscribe to the blog.