If I were a Sevco fan there is one thing I’d fear more than having no hope and that is having false hope.
It has done so many cruel things to them over the last couple of seasons, and it always seems to pop up right about now, during the summer, when there’s no actual football being played and where, therefore, the full range of nonsense can be promoted and even believed.
This has been a particularly cruel summer for them, with the whole SPFL thing arising, giving them the momentary belief that the title may yet be snatched from us.
Some of them still cling to this fantasy, and today they’ve had a shot in the arm by none other than Kenny Dalglish himself.
Our former player and one time stand in manager is talking crap, but that’s not the point.
He is speculating wildly, hypothesising on a scenario so unlikely that only The Daily Record really wants to view it as credible.
Even inside the walls of that rag, only their resident Sevco blogger, John McFarlane, could have been relied upon to push such a discredited line.
The “what if?” scenario which Dalglish is pushing is one where Thistle and Hearts win their coming court case and upend relegation. What then, asks Dalglish? Might it not spark other clubs into action, challenging promotions and even titles?
“Dalglish is concerned that if the clubs get a favourable judgement and relegation is scrapped, it could end up causing challenges to “null and void” titles won by Celtic, Dundee United, Raith Rovers and Cove Rangers,” McFarlane writes, doubtless breathless with excitment at the possiblity.
If only it actually were possible …
“If the judgment goes in favour of the clubs, then good luck to them,” Dalglish is said to have told another paper. “Their endeavour and fight against the SPFL will have led them to getting the result they wanted. But such a ruling may well open the door to many, many decisions in the SPFL’s four divisions being called into question. For example, if the relegation of Hearts from the Premiership, and Thistle from the Championship, is ruled to be unlawful, what’s to stop a club challenging the outcome at the top of the table as well?”
Ahem … a lot?
This is ridiculous.
It’s clear means the jokers from Ibrox, as they are the only ones who might have contemplated such an action, but it’s not going to happen and everyone sane knows that it’s not. If such a challenge were going to be forthcoming Sevco would not have waited until now to do it … they had season tickets to sell and it would have shifted a good few.
Instead, Sevco has let others swing the hammer on their behalf and there are two reasons why this is the case.
The first is that they are perfectly content to see Hearts bear the burden and take the flak for going head to head with the SPFL and the second is that even in the deepest recesses of Ibrox insanity, nobody at that club actually supports null and void.
This is a difficult one for many people to believe. Yet it’s true nonetheless.
Nobody at Ibrox ever did think that null and void was a sensible option, far less one they wanted to pursue.
Their objective was to cast a shadow on Celtic’s title, not to halt it.
They knew they’d never get away with that, they knew they’d never be able to successfully prevent it.
Sevconia was well aware that changing the past and altering the outcome to suit themselves was never a realistic prospect.
Their objective, instead, was to decapitate the SPFL board so that they and their allies might control the future. This is why the idea of Lawwell going back on there scares them so much; they realise they failed to get rid of the people wanted out and now see their hand even more weak than it was back then.
Dalglish doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, but some in Sevconia will take fresh hope from his comments.
They are all watching what happens in the Hearts-Thistle case. As I said earlier in the week, they even have their eyes on verdicts abroad, verdicts which don’t help them in the slightest but feed into the general view that the two clubs can win.
And they reckon that a win opens the door to title stripping.
It is not going to happen.
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