Being at Ibrox at times must be like being lost in stormy seas. Sometimes the wind drops enough and the waves fall that you could always think that you were sailing in smooth waters.
Comparatively speaking anyway. It’s never completely calm.
For almost all the rest of the time it’s a constant battle to stay afloat. That’s how their club’s directors must feel today, having gotten their new manager deal over the line at a huge cost, having his backroom team still to pay for and experiencing something like whiplash at the way their so-called “financial strength” has been squandered.
Today the latest hammer-blow fell, and although it’s not a huge number it’s the sheer fact of it, and the ancillary issues that go with it, which makes it a devastating blow. Their club has just found out that it is being sued by the organisers of the Aussie tour, for a cool £1.6 million. Not as much as they might have suffered, but it’s a blow nonetheless.
The club has already lost an estimated £4 million from their failure to participate. That’s serious cash for a club like them. The utter folly of bowing to fan pressure on this has proved to be expensive folly. Still, they avoided the wrath of the stands.
The £1.6 million comes on top of the £9 million suit that they’re facing already in the Hummel case, which they are almost certain to lose whether Elite is in administration or not.
Both are essentially for the same thing; violating a written agreement, the height of arrogance and the sort of thing that makes other organisations not want to trust them.
They went on to do the same with the cinch agreement, by refusing to participate in it on the bizarre pretext that they already had an existing deal of a similar nature. Not that this has ever stopped a single side in the league before.
They cannot be trusted. Commercial companies know now that they cannot be trusted. It is fitting, therefore, that they’ve hired a new manager who cannot be trusted.
This is who they are. This is what they are about, and if the weather is stormy it’s because they have very deliberately sailed their ship into those sorts of waters.
It’s as if they can’t help themselves, as if they are only comfortable when the wind whips in the sails, the waves tower over the starboard bow and the crew are all terrified and locked up below.
You can imagine the interview process for the compliance officer vacancy : SFA,: what school did you go to . Answer : Williamwood high . Oh very nice . SFA : Who is your favourite team . Answer : Lets just say the clubs name rhymes with Rangers .Superb answer . SFA Can you start tomorrow ……..?
That candidate sounds very compliant, start Monday.
The huns are so used to Scotland’s institutions bending for them and ultimately getting their own way, that they just can’t understand why they’re being ‘picked on’ by institutions outside of their scope of hunnery.