The Ibrox Board Is Promising Its Fans Everything But Magic Beanstalk Beans.

If the Celtic AGM was a good model for how shareholders attempt to hold their directors to account, then what can you say, and where do you even start, with the one across the city?

It was the kind of sanitised nonsense that only they could have produced.

It was the kind of event which used to only be staged in one of those tin-pot dictatorships; a meeting where everyone agreed with everything and the world outside was not even a factor in the discussions.

Had this been a Celtic AGM and had it gone as it did, I would have been severely concerned. And I would have a nagging suspicion that I had been lied to throughout.

Because their board didn’t just promise those fans unicorns. They promised them everything but magic beanstalk beans.

Even as they did so, they admitted to having misled those same supporters before.

They don’t have to sell players was the cry.

Nonsense, as they have admitted themselves time and time again.

The very idea that this club can keep on running up debts, that they can buy footballers whose value drops year on year until they leave for nominal fees when the whole model of the global game, even at this very time, runs counter to that is fanciful at best, and yet not only did those who were in the room swallow it but the media lapped it up.

They expect to double commercial revenues going into next season.

Eah? How? In case they haven’t noticed yet, they are squeezing their fans like a tube of toothpaste and it’s going to be near impossible to get much more out of them far less twice as much.

They admit that their deal with Castore was not as lucrative as they made out – in short, they admit to having lied to the fans about it in the first place, which comes as no surprise to our readers – but they expect to reach parity with Celtic next time they negotiate a contract.

What world do these people live in where this is remotely likely?

I laughed out loud reading their contention that Scottish football governance is a joke. We all know that it is but their version of that can be expressed in a single sentence and we know this because, once again, it’s part of the public record; “There are too many Tims at the top.” Which has done us a lot of good, as you can probably tell.

They told the fans that the shortfall needed to get through the season has been met by “existing investors” which also makes me grin from ear to ear. Who are these “investors” and what do they expect to get for their money? See, the clue is in the word. This isn’t a charitable donation, if it’s an investment then there has to be a return on it.

So was it loans? And if so what’s the collateral? Was it more – no laughing at the back – equity confetti? There’s a reason we call it that; confetti is worthless scraps of paper, and those share certificates must be near enough at that level now.

To put it the way it’s usually expressed; “bog roll is worth more.”

And every time you issue fresh shares you dilute the existing shareholders further, and that means the saps at Club 1872 get weaker by the day.

How long are they going to keep on bending over whilst paying dues? Their sole purpose in existing is to acquire a significant shareholding and every time one of these “debt to equity” switcheroos takes place it is their members who see their valuations plummet and their percentage of the club decrease. Who the Hell does that organisation really represent?

Certainly not the ordinary members, not the shareholders it is supposed to, or it would be vocally opposed to this continual bleeding out.

I said before our AGM that there have been systemic problems at Celtic for years but that the board got away with that because the team on the park was winning. The Ibrox AGM will look very different next year when we’ve got our title back, but honestly, even in spite of that I cannot understand how their supporters can be so gullible as to believe even half of what they heard.

The grinning Bisgrove, he of the 8000 commercial deals the equivalent of what Dermot Desmond would find if he pulled up his sofa cushions, told them that all is well. Robertson told them that they expect to reach break-even soon.

But if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. Because it depends on Bisgrove doubling commercial revenues – another 8000 deals maybe and enough new shirt sponsors that you won’t even see the shirt – and can be done without selling players.

This is stuff fit for the psych ward at Hidden Hills.

Not a single word of it should be treated seriously by serious minded people. The response to all this proves that there are few of them amongst the Ibrox fan-base or our appalling sports media.