Sevconia is not a happy place at the moment, after a weekend and an early start to this week that has left their supporters a little bit stunned. It seems that this close season is not going to plan after all, and a lot of their fans want to know what the plan is.
For openers, there was the devastating claim from Sports Direct that they will be the sole distributor of the Sevco kits come August. Sevco and Castore have bought time and tried to spin this claim but a lot of the Ibrox support are infuriated as details continue to be drip fed into the public domain.
House of Fraser went online with their pre-order page by the time Saturday was out and then came an interview where Castore basically admitted that contractual obligations give Sports Direct the right to continue to sell Sevco gear in spite of the club denying that utterly.
No sooner was this being absorbed but an interview with Gary McAllister drove some of them to fury.
In it, he not only confirmed that Tavernier will remain as captain – a decision which has gone down like a lead weight amongst their fans – but he used the term ten in a row, which is a shocker for fans who were told that the club didn’t consider our ninth title valid.
Once again, this is a case of reality slapping them in the face like a wet fish. Their club voted to end the season and aside from one public pronouncement which was so ridiculous no-one took it seriously, they weren’t really keen on voiding the season either. Sevco’s board of directors knows that Celtic being confirmed as champions was the only way forward.
Still, their fans never expected to hear their own assistant manager confirm it by saying the players all know the importance of this campaign.
“Everyone at this club has to embrace what is a massive challenge to stop a team from winning ten leagues in a row but we’re up for the battle,” he said.
On top of this, the courts rejected the petition by Thistle and Hearts and sent it back to football, with an SFA panel to adjudicate on it later this month.
This was stunning news, as many of their fans had been led to believe Doncaster would face a perjury charge and be marched from Hampden in handcuffs due to “evidence” that he had lied and corrupted the vote over ending the campaign.
That they believed such madness just goes to show how backward and crazy many of them are … but they definitely did expect it.
For 24 hours they clung to the hope that “arbitration” meant something other than it did, and that the whole thing would get swiftly kicked back to the courts. Except a legal expert confirmed that not only would the SFA panel determine the fates of all involved but that there would be no appeal, and so no prospect of Doncaster or anyone else being whipped in the stocks in the public square as many in Sevco appeared to believe was on the cards.
The three “exceptions” they cling to are so pitiful that nobody can take them seriously. The first – lack of jurisdiction – has already been resolved; the courts are the ones who turned it over to the SFA. The second – a breach of “natural justice” – is ridiculous; teams who finish bottom are relegated as per and the teams who finish top are made champions and/or promoted and so that is natural justice. Third – errors of law – depends on the SFA basically finding against its own tribunal.
Ignore the swelling nonsense about that stuff; there will be no appeal.
One amazing post from SevcoMedia, outlining how the SPFL might try to “get rid of evidence” is worth publishing here in full; brace yourselves for this lunacy. I have reproduced it exactly as it appears, bad grammar, spelling mistakes, failures of logic, madness and all …
“I know your saying hiring to prove the wrong doing but you just know that someone within this cabal has a taig family member or friend who is an IT whizz and has already been in to both the spfl’s systems and Dundee’s (out of hours or remotely) and cleaned up everthing they need to clean up with all traces of wrong doing never to see the light of day. It really is amazing what hackers can do these days.
It would take days of forensically examining the hardware and software to identify the changes which they’ve had weeks now to bury and to double and triple check for traces and that’s never going to happen with a request for table top request for data/ information and paperwork.
We’ve got to remember how big this voting fraud is as it’s goes beyond thistle and hearts as it would bring down every last one of them with a potential £20 – £25M fraud re access to a potential CL kitty, leagues been taken away and Scotland’s reputation in tatters in uefa for the figureheads like liewell and the speccy doughnut although in Scotland it would be in the rags for 48hours then it would be chip paper and the subject would be taboo in the phone ins.
Our only hope is a whistleblower regarding the above with print outs, screenshots, recorded messages, taped voices and video recordings but that’s all pie in the sky unless there is more than one whistleblower which then can demonstrates collaboration as a starting point.
As much as I want the vote properly examined and the truth outed I just sadly don’t think it will happen due to the above.
This won’t stop looking on with interest right enough.”
Quite something to see, isn’t it?
And then, fresh from that particular shock, came the news that Nikola Katic, their best central defensive player from last season, had suffered a cruciate ligament injury and was likely to miss at least the first half of the next campaign. How to replace him? They have no idea, and no money to do it with. Just imagine the panic inside Ibrox over this.
Phil has done a great piece on this today; in it he points out that not only will Sevco struggle to replace the player, but they were actually relying on some easy cash by selling him for a profit. Now they are trapped in the worst of all possible worlds.
The idea that it might have been Morelos who injured him … too delicious not to smile over, although you never want to see any player get hurt.
Today came the latest blow, the publication of the fixture list, which has driven them so mad that even some of the hacks – like the whinging Darrell Currie – have stopped even pretending to be neutrals. The moaning over this is ridiculous when you consider that they have their opening game at one of the hardest away grounds to visit where home advantage has essentially been negated by the removal of fans from the equation. Still, they are taking it personally.
And amidst it all, their fans want to know what the plan is. It is sinking in that they’ve lost all the big battles of this summer so far, and that their club has done only modest – some would label it pitiful – business in the transfer market, and this in a critical year.
One by one, doors are closing on their quest to stop the ten.
For many months now they’ve clung to the idea that we’ve been set back a year … but the moment the SPFL confirmed the ninth title that hope should have ended. They have hung onto it far longer than was healthy for them, and that will be to their cost. They are starting to realise it.
And finally, some of them are starting to put pressure on their club over it.
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.