Over the course of the last 24 hours, another blow struck Ibrox and it went almost unreported.
The Herald did a piece on it and that was about it.
How serious a blow is it?
Well, that remains to be seen, but it’s something they could certainly have done without.
Remember, this is the club that recently hit its fan organisation up for a £2.5 million in emergency funding via another dodgy share issue. What are they worth again? 30p? Ha! Really?
The man who struck this latest blow was Mike Ashley, of course.
Do you remember all those stories about how he was no longer a factor in their lives?
Remember all those articles we wrote saying “Well, let’s just wait and see, shall we?”
Turns out that the bloggers were right again.
Ashley continues to be a major thorn in their side, and his case against them continues to creep its way through the courts.
Yesterday’s victory was significant.
It compels King and Paul Murray to turn over their personal documents, which Sports Direct claim proves that they concealed information about a sponsorship deal that Ashley and his company were supposed to know about.
The Ibrox club has won its own little battle, in forcing Ashley and his company to turn over analysis on the likely effects of a merchandising boycott from Ibrox’s fans.
But I’ll tell you why Ashley’s win is significant and Ibrox’s is not.
Ashley’s win is significant because what they claim Sevco broke the law.
The Ibrox club wants documents which prove that there would have been no financial upside for either party in allowing Sports Direct to have the deal. Sports Direct will contend that they still had rights, and that’s all the law cares about.
Ibrox’s rather bizarre argument is that they broke a financial contract because the stipulations in it made no commercial sense. But they signed it in the first place when those risks were readily apparent to everyone involved.
As legal arguments go, this one is a stone loser.
This is emblematic of how Ibrox sees the world.
Rules? What do they matter?
The moment they become inconvenient they can be jettisoned.
Contracts? Regulations? The law of the land?
Valid only as long as they are useful, and then no further.
And to think people still think my doping hypothesis is too crazy to be true …
There is nothing Ibrox will not do to gain any kind of momentary advantage that it can.
That’s the key word though here, the key term; momentary.
This lot never thinks long term.
hey never think about consequences somewhere down the line.
Sevco is like one of those vast global corporations which has no greater loyalty except to itself. It will pollute rivers, send toxic smoke into the atmosphere, expose its workers, its customers and wider society to deadly chemicals and only look at the balance sheet, never worried that it might do long term damage including to itself.
In their scramble to win ten in a row Sevco has pursued all manner of insanity and their epic standoff with Ashley is but one facet of that. It may prove to be an expensive one.