Ten Years On From The Dave King Coup, It’s Clear Who Benefited Most. Celtic Did.

This morning, Andy Newport of the Daily Record published a piece about how next March will be the 10-year anniversary of the Dave King takeover at Ibrox. There was not a lot in it I disagreed with, but I read it and found myself scratching my head, trying to figure out the message behind it.

He seems to be asking if this Ibrox board, having played its role in removing “the spivs” is now on the brink of being seen by their fans as the villains. I think if you’re asking that question right now you’re probably too dumb to be contemplating this issue soberly; to me, it seems obvious that the Dave King revolution was an absolute failure on a level rarely seen in history.

As many of you know, I enjoy drawing historical analogies, and the one that comes to mind is something I’ve discussed many times before: the aftermath of the assassination of Julius Caesar, which took place on the Ides of March in 44 BC. The assassins called themselves the Liberators, but they were almost immediately outmanoeuvred by Mark Antony, who understood that they lacked something crucial—the support of the Roman mob.

Antony made peace with them initially, but at Caesar’s funeral, he gave a speech that incited a riot. The Liberators fled the city, and over the next few years, the armies of Antony and Octavian picked them off one by one until nothing was left. The Liberators had sought to defend the Republic, but in the end, they utterly destroyed it. Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate, which eventually collapsed into civil war. Octavian emerged victorious, founding the Julio-Claudian dynasty and ushering in the era of the emperors.

Such a tremendous story, and such a perfect analogy for what happens when you “kill the king” without having a strategy for winning the peace.

The Ibrox board which swept to power with Dave King at the helm didn’t have a plan either. They talked a good game, but a decade later what do we find? As Newport pointed out in his piece, it’s a club engulfed in chaos. The truth is, it always was, and it was King and his cohort who unleashed the chaos. That club has been a model of instability ever since.

Think about where this began for a minute, on the day that Dave King was deemed a “fit and proper person”; it will forever be to the shame of the SFA that he was allowed an executive role at a Scottish football club. He was no more legitimate than Richard III.

Let’s not forget that 10 years ago, King arrived on these shores fresh from a legal battle that branded him a criminal, a tax evader, a fraudster, and a liar. Regular readers will know my respect and admiration for Graham Spiers, but his columns at the time were disgraceful. He argued that as long as the Ibrox fans got the hero they wanted, most people in the game here be would be willing to overlook King’s litany of sins.

King did no more to protect Ibrox or make it strong than Richard III did for the Plantagenet dynasty. The things he ushered in have been disastrous for that club.

No amount of media spin can make his reign look any better. Nothing that Ibrox fans believe can counter the awful facts of what that 10 year spell has meant for them.

Why, just today, the Ibrox club is back in court for the final stage in the Elite Sports case, just one of the many lingering legacies of King’s disastrous leadership.

He and the people he swept to power with have been responsible for one of the darkest periods the Ibrox fanbase has ever known, culminating this season in a stadium closure brought about by their own incompetence. Celtic fans are more likely to commemorate this 10th anniversary than those King allegedly liberated from their terrible position.

And what was that terrible position anyway?

They had a genuine world-class businessman in Mike Ashley on the board, who brought to the table a world-class retailing operation that gave the club a greater reach than ever before. Ashley also offered a partnership with Newcastle United, which could have provided Ibrox with access to top academy players and loan deals from which they could have benefited for years.

Their only “crime” was wanting to run the club on a break-even basis. They were accused of much else, including profiteering, but most of that was a product of the dark arts unleashed by King and his people to discredit them as much as possible. Actually, the merchandising deal with Ashley was just as valuable as their current deal with Castore, and was just about in line with the industry average at the time; somehow it was weaponised against them.

Had that club learned to run on a break-even basis, it might not currently be in the dire situation it finds itself in. Those people were hounded out because they proposed a period of sanity. Nothing that has happened since can even remotely be called sane.

Just look at the number of legal problems that arose from their attempts to oust Ashley; some of them still haunt them to this day. The Elite Sports case is one of them; a direct consequence of King’s decision-making and his attempts to force Ashley away from the club.

King brought the same strong-arm tactics that he had tried—and failed—to use against the South African tax authorities into Scottish football.

Even the takeover itself was later investigated by the City of London and found to have breached the rules. All King did at Ibrox was create chaos and bring disgrace on them, and his board, with its own penchant for ripping up commercial deals and making pathetic attempts to overthrow the governing bodies on account of perceived bias have only created more of both.

It was during King’s term of office when the club earned its modern reputation as one with no respect for written contracts, no regard for regulations, and no trustworthiness in even the smallest matters. Let’s not forget that King came to Scotland branded a “glib and shameless liar” by the South African tax courts, and when that’s the man at the top of your organization, you might as well have a king who murdered his way to the throne.

The reputational damage Dave King inflicted on that club can be measured in court cases, millions of pounds in fees and fines, with the largest potentially coming with Elite Sports claims for lost earnings. It can be measured in the type of people who were part of his coup and who still sit on the Ibrox board to this day—the very people who can’t manage a simple stadium renovation and seek to blame others for their own mistakes.

The club’s financial situation is also largely the responsibility of decisions taken during Dave King’s tenure. He was the one, as I mentioned in a piece last week, who said during Steven Gerrard’s time in charge that they “front-loaded” signings and spent more money than they had available. This incurred directors’ debts and the so-called “equity confetti,” which we still laugh about, joking that an Ibrox share certificate isn’t worth the toilet paper it’s printed on.

But the legacy of those directors’ loans and debts is that those who gave their money at the time to fund Gerrard are no longer capable or willing to do so. This means that when the manager needs to sign players, he first has to sell those in the first team squad.

Front-loading spending is all well and good when it’s happening, but you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Eventually, Peter’s going to want his money back, and even if you can push repayments down the road, what happens when you run out of road? That’s the situation at Ibrox now, both in terms of directors’ patience and tolerance for carrying the club’s debts, and in UEFA regulations, which don’t permit clubs to spend more than they earn.

Dave King was initially greeted as a hero for moving out the “spivs.” His tub-thumping presser in the aftermath reminded me a lot of Margaret Thatcher, quoting St Francis Of Assisi on the steps of Downing Street; “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” She brought precious little of any of that … and neither did King.

Still, he might have gotten away with unleashing chaos if not for one other thing—the one thing that was guaranteed to turn the people against him, the one thing that was guaranteed to whip up anger and usher in the current revolutionary mood.

He utterly failed to counter the rise and dominance of Celtic.

That was the only reason they ever trusted him with the keys to the kingdom in the first place. Dave King, the “great white hope,” the “saviour,” took power and then watched as Celtic began the greatest period of one-club dominance in Scottish football history.

In the ten years since he and his board launched their “glorious coup,” Celtic has won the treble five times, the double twice and secured 22 trophies out of the 30 that have been up for grabs. Two of the others were won by St Johnstone. So, what has Dave King’s 10-year revolution actually accomplished? One domestic title and two domestic cups.

Until Dave King took control at Ibrox, Celtic had won three domestic trebles in our history. We now have eight. Accounting for the Survival Lie tainted trophy count, they had a substantial lead on major honours won. Both clubs currently sit level, and that is due in no small part to that man’s decade of disaster and poor decision-making.

Of course, King wasn’t even around for all of it.

On the back of the City of London Takeover Panel verdict, he fled Scotland and Scottish football like a thief in the night, with Celtic having just secured its fourth consecutive treble.

No one has ever fled this country’s football landscape so thoroughly beaten and humiliated.

He even missed what would have been his swan song when COVID saw an entire campaign played in front of empty stands. Gerrard’s team won its title, stopping Celtic’s 10-in-a-row, but in the aftermath what? Another Celtic double, a treble, and another double with seven trophies in the last nine, to make it abundantly clear that the COVID campaign was a fluke—more the result of circumstances than any strategy worked out at Ibrox.

No one can honestly claim that the club would have worse off than this with the Spivs in charge, can they? How could they defend that assertion knowing what we know today?

If that man had just left well enough alone and allowed things to take their course with Ashley and the so-called spivs at the helm, I cannot believe they would have presided over such a complete collapse. You cannot have been in charge through such a period of dominance for your closest rival, and call that a success in any way, shape, or form.

The Liberatores assassinated Julius Caesar, but it did not secure the Republic. It destroyed it instead. Richard III, in an effort to counter the power of a rival family that probably could not have threatened the throne in any significant way, committed acts of historic barbarity that branded him a tyrant to this day and brought down his entire family line.

You could call those revolutions a success if you wanted, but no one really believes it, and history bears out a very different verdict.

The only people who benefited from Dave King sweeping to power were at Celtic Park. We have enjoyed the last 10 years probably more than any since the late ’60s and early ’70s, when we were a formidable force in Europe and brought the big cup home.

Andy Newport is quoting Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy when he asks if this Ibrox board will hang around long enough to go from being heroes to villains.

Who exactly are these people heroes to? What’s their legacy, except for Celtic’s well stocked trophy cabinet? What did they accomplish except to ensure a decade of near-total dominance by one club—and not their club, but ours?