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Keevins’ Latest Piece Shows Us Again What A Lazy Gutless Writer He Is.

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For the last week, one story has dominated Scottish football, and it has been poked and prodded from every conceivable angle; it is the ongoing civil war at Ibrox.

There are so many elements to it a beginner wouldn’t know where to start, but you can simplify the whole thing for them by putting down a couple of statements of fact.

The first is that the board has agreed to play second fiddle to Celtic on a tour of Australia which has been marketed around the “homecoming of Ange Postecoglou” and a section of their support has gone absolutely batshit over the fixture.

The second is that their main fan shareholder organisation, and the group with the third biggest overall shareholding in the club, has accused their board of, amongst other things, lying to them on a repeated basis and not doing enough to secure their long-term financial stability.

The third thing is that the club, already under siege from allegations of a similar nature from Dave King, has responded by attacking Club 1872 and threatening retribution.

As a lawyer might say, “these are the facts of the case and they are undisputed.”

Nobody really doubts that any of this has happened.

Every newspaper has touched on the matter a little, and some of the blogs have written about it a lot.

Each day brings new developments and new angles from which to examine things.

As a blogger, I’ve enjoyed covering it this past week and the fun isn’t over yet, of course.

National titles have also devoted much time and space to it, with many of the articles written by journalists and some of them written by ex Ibrox players urging everyone to sit down and talk before things get out of hand.

It is a massive subject and too important not to write about.

So of course, it’s the last thing Hugh Keevins wants to do.

There is nothing that I have ever written about Hugh Keevins which better sums him up than he summed it up himself this weekend. In his Sunday column he made a quite incredible statement for someone in the mainstream media to make; that he is, in fact, a cowardly fraud.

I’m not going to labour the point; I’ll let his own words condemn him more harshly than I ever have or ever could or ever will again.

“It’s a dangerous business for an onlooker to comment on the subject of judgement, competence and honesty as it relates to Rangers’ board. One television pundit this season made reference to Rangers’ finances and used a single word that so enraged the club he has not worked inside Ibrox since. But what he said was trivial compared to accusing office bearers of dishonesty. If Rangers follow the letter of their own law, will the end of the season bring bans for supporters or legal action? An examination of Rangers’ participation in the Sydney Cup is a more accessible line of debate and less likely to lead to litigation.”

This is Keevins at his absolute finest; afraid to go where everyone else is boldly going without a care in the world.

Because it’s perfectly obvious that the Ibrox board is guilty of dishonesty, since the media itself, this blog and others and a great very many of their own fans, have caught them engaging in it again and again and again and again and again.

One of the incredible things about the last week is how little proper scrutiny has been given to the Club 1872 statement which provoked the incredible one out of the club itself.

Perhaps the most astonishing part of it is that they claim to have documentary and other evidence which proves that the board has lied to the fans on multiple occasions.

We all do, as it happens, because over the last couple of years their own published accounts have revealed numerous instances where they lied to the fans and to the press on a variety of subjects, from the value of commercial contracts, to Mike Ashley’s “non-involvement” in them, to how much they paid for and received in transfer fees … and you could go on and on and on.

The latest one that bears scrutiny is the fee they received for Nathan Patterson.

All the initial stories said it was an eight figure sum, but let’s be realistic here; did Everton really pay an eight figure sum for a guy they have so little faith in that he’s played only a handful of minutes?

None of us ever really believed that story, but it’s the published accounts where the truth will out.

The commercial deals which they have heralded are not worth as much as they made out; Keevins own buddy at The Record and Sunday Mail, Keith Jackson, has already been briefed about some of them and it’s only a slight exaggeration to say than in some instances they’d have done better if they just pulled up all the sofa cushions in one of the Ibrox lounges.

When they launched MyGers they explicitly told the fans that the “tier” system would never be used to give people priority for match tickets. Until they did. Now it’s so commonplace that fans on their forums complain that they don’t see how they’ll ever be able to attend away games again … this is a club which has no problem feeding its fans all manner of tripe.

The Castore deal was marketed as being just as good as Celtic got from Adidas.

A breath-taking, brazen falsehood as every one of the Celtic blogs said that it was at the time.

The same was said about the deal they made with Hummel, the deal they later arbitrarily cancelled, sparking a threat of legal action and God knows what sort of payoff.

When King was there, they were even more blatant.

He lied to the City of London regulators when they were investigating the takeover, and one presumes – although we don’t know for sure – that other members of his “concert party” did similar … the regulator banned UK companies from doing business with him in no small part because of those lies.

King may not be there anymore, but the culture of the club is to engage in his sort of casual deception and if the Ibrox shareholders have only just become aware of how often this happens and how blatantly – and there are other issues where they know the club has lied which don’t belong in this piece but will get a fuller exploration at another time – then more fool them, because it’s been perfectly obvious to a lot of us for much longer.

For someone in Keevins’ business, this stuff isn’t just part of the job description, it literally is the job itself.

For him to write the paragraph I highlighted above, like some wee boy scared of a row from his dad, is the most damning thing anyone ever need know about his “journalistic credentials.”

He actually uses the word “dangerous” to describe giving scrutiny to Ibrox.

That is quite disgraceful when we live in a world where journalists are dying in Ukraine doing their jobs, when others are facing death squads and terror in other parts of the world and where, closer to home, guys like the brilliant Michael Gillard are winning awards for daring revelations about top London crime figures.

Here, this guy is shitting himself in case he offends a used car and bus salesman who might – the horror of it – ban him from a football ground.

Whatever else Keevins might be, he ain’t a journalist.

Nothing proves it more than his own shocking statements, published in a newspaper column, under his own name, this weekend.

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  • Johnny mcglinchey says:

    Herr lip the retard. HH

  • Bigmick says:

    100% correct, James.
    Total shitebaggery from Keevins.
    He the ‘journalist’ equivalent of a neighbourhood curtain twitcher…you know, the type that see/hear the vandalism to neighbours cars, liberty taking bullies etc, but don’t want involved. Spineless indeed.

  • Edward Mc Graw says:

    Hugh Keevins is just the latest in a long line of rabble rousers, it’s best to ignore him, articles such as this are exactly what he wants.

  • Seppington says:

    “One television pundit this season made reference to Rangers’ finances and used a single word that so enraged the club he has not worked inside Ibrox since.”

    Erm…I knew he was think but since when is an Ibrokes ban “litigation”? Surely if you tell the truth (as a REAL journalist would without hesitation) then any litigation against you would come to naught?

    I think what he really means is that he doesn’t have the intelligence to discuss such matters but his ego won’t allow him to say that. Or that he’s frightened a disgruntled (have they ever been gruntled?) hun might Will Smith him for it….or worse, as is their wont.

    Hugh Keevins – always and forever, a pathetic little weasel.

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