Sevco’s Equity Confetti Locks Them Into A Dangerous Liaison With Vulture Capitalism.

When Manchester City was bought by a Thai business consortium they were a low-lying English club who didn’t know what the future held. Then the hedge fund bought Carlos Tevez and suddenly the future seemed clear.

Sheik Mansour was next, and they welcomed his gazillions with open arms, never wondering what the consequences might be.

Ask them now. They are deeply concerned, but crucially one of the things that worries them most is the government will pass a law so extreme that it scares the UAE government out of the club.

The same fears stalk the supporters of Chelsea and Liverpool. Spurs have less to worry about as Levy and ENIC have had their claws into the club long enough that regulations won’t shift them, as they’ll be protected by “local commitment” clauses.

Arsenal fans and Manchester United fans despise their American owners and would dearly love to see the back of them. They would welcome such a law.

Until that law comes, these clubs aren’t the only ones in England who will be at the mercy of vulture capital and whilst the EPL teams seem to benefit – I would dispute that, as would Man Utd and Arsenal fans – from having these people holding the strings, there are dozens of other clubs up and down the pyramid who have been bought by hedge-funds and regretted it.

Some of these clubs are still in the grip of these financiers today, with no end in sight.

A few have even gone to the wall.

Vulture capital firms circle around every major industry looking for weaknesses so they can get their feet under the table. They eventually manoeuvre themselves into a controlling role and then the leeching starts.

When you think of the number of ways there are to bleed out a football club, slowly, over years, you can understand why some of the hedge funds like them. Buy a club, even one in Scotland, and you have ready access to season ticket money.

You can leverage the buy-out and use club’s assets as the collateral. Failing that, you can flog them and then have the companies you sell to rent them back to the club at extortionate rates, in deals lasting decades.

In the end, if it all falls down, you can sell everything up to some equally unscrupulous developer and walk away with your pockets bulging. If you think fans wouldn’t tolerate that, look at England and the utter helplessness of the fans of the so-called Big Six in the face of what their boards are trying to do.

Look at the fans of Blackpool and their 30-year battle against their former owners, or Coventry, who were bought in 2007 by a Mayfair hedge-fund and thought they could reach the EPL, failed, and who have spent every day with mayhem at their door.

Ibrox fans still delude themselves that their club is in good shape. It’s not.

It requires constant rounds of equity confetti just to keep the lights on.

The latest infusion of capital comes from the Far East and a hedge-fund.

All Sevco fans care about is that the guy fronting the money has “assets over £11 billion in his control” … it never dawns on them to wonder what a guy and an organisation like that wants with a Scottish football team whose stands are populated by the dregs of loyalism and unionism, and which runs more funding campaigns than a US TV evangelist.

These people are not emotionally involved; they are investors. They will want returns. If one of these organisations gets enough shares, by whatever means, to mount a takeover bid then the ball is up on the slates. The club is wide open for it, and their fans don’t even realise it. Club 1872’s paltry shareholding will not save them.

Sevco is a vulnerable company, wide open to these people.

As usual their fans are asleep to all of it.

Those who believe that their club is in good shape because it just won a title are, as usual, ignoring the precedents of history; when Rangers went out of business it was on the back of being “bought by a billionaire” and they had won three titles in a row.

Nobody saw it coming … except for all of us who did.