One of the things I hear a lot at the moment was about how Dave King was right to say that Celtic was a “house of cards” that would collapse the moment we stopped winning. There are no shortage of people who will tell you that it’s happened just so.
I find it somewhat incongruous that we’re even debating something that come out of the mouth of Mr Glib and Shameless.
No-one in Scottish football has benefited so from an easy ride as he has. Almost every single thing that has been said about King in the media, and almost everything that is believed about him by the Ibrox support is manifestly false.
If you believe the narrative about King that exists elsewhere, he was the gallant leader who saved the club from rapacious villains, restored its financial strength and presided over their rise from the ashes to the pinnacle of the game in Scotland.
The trouble is, none of it is true. King is the master of his own myths, and we have a gullible or compliant media which happily swallowed every one of them.
King departed Ibrox a beaten and almost broken man.
I know because I gloatingly wrote his obituary and laughed long and loud at his record.
On his watch, Celtic had its best domestic spell in our history. He was on his fourth manager and he left the club a financial basket case.
Nor has King laid foundations for the future; his club is still reliant on director’s loans to pay the bills, their infrastructure is still behind Celtic’s and their football operation still hasn’t sold a player for more than £2 million in the ten years it’s been operational. They are good at putting on a show over there, but appearances can be, and are, deceptive.
There are stories just begging to be written about the full scope of what’s going on across the city; King’s actual legacy isn’t clear yet, but even with everything going on at Celtic Park my money is on it that it won’t be a return to the glory days.
So why does anyone seriously think that King is some kind of seer because he “predicted” this? All King was doing was talking through his backside. I could sit here in this chair and make all kind of outlandish “predictions.” Will I be hailed as a genius if some million to one prospect turns out to have some vague relationship to actual events?
Celtic hasn’t “collapsed.” Not by any stretch of the imagination. We’re facing a big summer, a tough summer, and I am honestly worried about the coming season, but one way or another we will be in the race. We are a fact of life that they are going to have to live with for the rest of their own existence, which is much less secure than ours is.
Nobody can doubt that we have done ourselves damage. But to claim King somehow predicted this is ridiculous.
Had we appointed a manager in a timely fashion the whole mood around the club would be different at the moment and then people would be talking about one bad season.
Fans would be in a better place and the rebuild would be underway.
Whatever you think of our decision to wait and wait and wait on Howe, we clearly came close to pulling it off and although I think it was stupid beyond belief and reckless beyond comprehension to let this drag on, we believed we had it over the line, or just about.
So things could have gone a very different way … and almost did.
The state we’re in right now is embarrassing, but it is not perilous, and it would take something unforeseeable to mere mortals to change that.
The one certainty in these dark days is that they will not last. Solid foundations still underpin Celtic … not every club can say the same.
King is a blowhard and a loser. He departed Ibrox a joke figure.
His “prediction” was nonsense until we gave it form … and in time we will show it up as yet another thing he got wrong.