The Ibrox AGM Is Tomorrow. Smarter Fans Would Have That Board Over The Coals.

In spite of the hype in the papers, Ibrox’s board faces an uncomfortable morning tomorrow but not a threatening one. They will get some stick and they’ll be asked some hard questions but they are going to get through it unscathed.

There are questions they should be asked but won’t be. Much of the heat has been taken off them by the departure of Van Bronckhorst. The hype machine has helped to sell Beale as a progressive step instead of a backward one. How hiring their former assistant manager is the Great Leap Forward that they’re being sold won’t be explained.

It always helps to have an AGM before the new guy has managed his first game. In his case he’s standing on a “winning record” or so he’d have you believe.

We’ll get to The Mooch in due course, when they drop more points, but one of the reasons he’s there is so that the board will get a free ride on the only day that matters to them, the one where they actually have to look people in the eye.

Amongst the things they should be asked about is the trail of court cases and why they’ve arisen. Why is their board incapable of treating commercial contracts seriously? It has exposed them to millions in fines, money that should out on the pitch.

They should be asked what their actual stance was on the Sky deal, and if their obstruction of that was based on petty nonsense and the demand for an apology they’ll never get. That was a massive television contract and they could have crashed it. If that was our board, I’d want to know that they took that risk for better reasons than petty spite.

They should be asked for a detailed breakdown on the reasons why King was asked to leave the board, since he and his acolytes are intent on using the meeting to make waves. They should have a counter argument ready to blow him away. But that might open them up to questions about where some of the money to keep the lights on actually came from.

King and Club 1872 will attempt to force Park off the board. They will fail, and one of the reasons they will fail is that neither King or his pitiful placemen thought this through when they allowed the Club 1872 shareholding to be diluted in so many rounds of equity confetti. Had the “shareholders group” gone in there with a 10% or even 15% vote share that, combined with his votes, could have made life a little bit more uncomfortable for those in charge.

These clowns only have themselves to blame for the state they are in. They have allowed themselves to be weakened with every issuing of shares. They have allowed themselves to be used by a charlatan like King, for his own ends, and then wonder why the club doesn’t want to openly deal with them. It would be generous to call these people idiots and leave it at that.

A lot of their ordinary fans – those who’ve never contributed to King’s little fan club – have genuine concerns, including about The Mooch’s appointment as manager, but they are going to be side-lined by the pissing contest between King and the people he doesn’t like … it plays into the hands of a board which will use that to rally their own troops.

As a “neutral” I would happily watch both sides knock the Hell out of one another whilst I order another box of popcorn, but I worry that a shambles over there leads to some people in our house getting complacent and thinking they don’t have to do too much to stay ahead.

That’s the only risk I can see from tomorrow’s rabble.