GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MARCH 06: John Gilligan, Dave King and Paul Murray pose for media following being voted on to the Rangers board at this mornings extraordinary general meeting at Ibrox on March 6, 2015 in Glasgow,Scotland. Shareholders at the meeting called by Mr King, who owns 14.5% of shares in Rangers International Football Club plc, voted Derek Llambias and finance director Barry Leach off the board. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
Having taken Keith Jackson to task earlier today, in the latest Jackass article, I’m now in the uncomfortable position of praising him, if only for showing a modicum of common sense regarding Dave King’s latest shenanigans. Jackson has slated King in today’s piece, making it clear that he’s wholly opposed to the ex-chairman’s nonsensical return plan.
Yet, I remain sceptical of Jackson’s views.
Even when he’s on the right track, he still repeats a familiar mantra that doesn’t entirely hold up to scrutiny. He’s not alone in spouting this, mind you, and I can’t lay all the blame on his doorstep, but I won’t pretend to agree with it either. This oft-repeated notion that regime change at Ibrox is both inevitable and necessary needs some serious unpacking.
The real question for Jackson, and others who push this line, is why?
Regime change for what purpose, exactly?
If you’re advocating for an overhaul of the entire board of directors at a football club, you ought to have a clear idea of what you’re aiming to achieve post-replacement. What’s the plan once the old guard are gone? Who takes over, and what’s the overarching goal?
At Celtic, I know what I want.
I want fresh thinking, modern leadership, and new ideas that can take the club forward. It’s glaringly obvious to me that Celtic need to separate the football department from the finance side, giving the football people the autonomy to run things without interference. Our chairman’s divisive presence is another obstacle that has to go if we want to create a more harmonious environment. And, perhaps most importantly, the largest shareholder should not be exerting undue influence from afar, especially without the authority to do so.
So, it’s pretty straightforward what I envision: a separation of powers, a progressive board willing to challenge the status quo at the SFA and SPFL, an independent chairman with no ties to the current regime, and a structure that limits any single shareholder from dominating strategic decisions. All of this is perfectly reasonable, logical, and hardly revolutionary. The basic structure remains the same, with the club continuing to make money and win trophies.
But when it comes to Jackson and his ilk, it’s far less clear what they expect to happen at Ibrox. They seem to believe that change is necessary but haven’t articulated what that change looks like. Their vague calls for transformation lack any concrete ideas or workable alternatives. They may think it’s simple, but in reality, it’s anything but. The challenges facing any new board at Ibrox are the same ones the current board is grappling with: the need for financial sustainability, the necessity to cut costs, and the requirement to stay within the lines of financial fair play. Like it or not, the current Ibrox board is following the correct strategy in this regard.
Any club posting annual losses is unattractive to potential investors. The situation at Ibrox makes any outside financial boost a remote possibility. Those calling for fresh investment and new leadership are simply recycling old, failed strategies. They talk about investment as though it’s some kind of magic bullet, but that’s exactly what got them into this mess in the first place. Their club is trapped in a perpetual cycle of poor decision-making, and not a single person advocating for change seems to have a workable plan to break that loop.
It’s spend more money. Get into debt. Cut costs at the last available second. Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a road to nowhere.
Why is it that only a handful of Celtic sites seem to grasp the reality of what’s happening at Ibrox? It’s clear that they should have been run sustainably from the start, and yet, for over a decade, they’ve pursued reckless spending without success.
The club is now being forced to live within its means – exactly what they should have been doing all along – and this course correction is not only necessary but long overdue.
King doesn’t have a plan to change this. Jackson at least seems to understand that part of it, although he refuses to lay out the full scale of King’s previous failure.
And despite his rhetoric, neither he nor anyone else in the mainstream media who are pushing this “replace the board” narrative seems to have one either. Talking about replacing the board and bringing in new investment is just a waste of time until they figure out what they want the new board to do and where they want that investment to go.
If the only goal is to repeat the same disastrous patterns, they might as well skip the preamble and prepare for Rangers 3, because that’s the only place this trajectory leads.
They cannot even get a refurbishment job on their stadium correct ! They turned a straightforward job into a dog’s dinner with the end product being their fans cannot watch their games in a comfortable fashion because of the botched prep work and a sense of watching a game like looking into a pillar box ..amateur hour does not come close !
Let them get on with it James not worth your or our time to debate their failings.
Just hope they totally implode from within and go the way of their last club.
The CHISLER is losing his touch I’d ARSEHOLES like the BOOZE JOCKEY Jackass Jackson is calling him out.
But no doubt another GRIFTER or 2 will show up full of empy promises,,with Gerrard’s name being branded about as selling point.
Yes, it is crazy that they don’t wake up to how pointless this is. If Keef or anyone else in the meja really wanted to help the fans then they should write a piece like yours and lay it on the line. Perhaps they really don’t get it or they just pretend not to. Anyhoo, their stuck in a cycle as you say and going nowhere. Is anyone ever going to level with them? Who knows, who cares.
King only looking for self gain and his name in the papers. Good expenses to jet back and forward.
Any of the klan with a few brain cells left and without the blue tinted specs will know that King is a charlatan.
But the Klan’s biggest problem is that IF any of their own steps out of line or goes against the Kultchured narrative they get brow beaten for being a closet kaflik or an imposter. Threatened and mob handedly dealt with.
It breeds a kultchur of compliance and conformity and that’s how they got themselves liquidated before especially with a compliant meeja helping things along too.
They had a chance in 2012 to restart, set a rebuild program but alas that would never have been tolerated. They had a chance with proper governance and Astley’s money and muscle power to get a proper board and manageable direction and strategy but the were ratted out by King and Brown and co.
They get no sympathy from me. They are a total basket-case just lookin for someone else to blame.
It’s the ‘Hun’ mindset, the failure to accept the World as it is and not what they want it to be.
Their Supremacist and Entitlement psyche has been built on discrimination and bigotry.
Yet the Wold outside ‘the best wee bigoted kuntry inra wurld’ does not bend to their will.
The ‘Reality’ as experienced by the rest of us does not change what actually happened just to conform to their viewpoint.
And the longer they maintain the fiction then the deeper the pit they dig and the bigger the shock when their eyes finally open.
This is the main reason they can’t accept the truth of Liquidation.
Liquidation of Rangers should not happen in their world, ergo, according to their logic it didn’t happen.
And the reasons for it happening could not be the causes of the failure of Rangers because Liquidation didn’t happen,
ergo the reasons, living outwith their means and the institutionalised disregard for Rules and Regulations should just
be maintained because they must be inconsequential as there are no penalties.
To them the answer to their problems is to continue to do what they are doing, because in their their perverted view of the world, there will always be ‘Staunch Rangerzz Men’ with deep pockets who will step in to keep things rolling along. And when they have depleted their Pension Pots and children’s inheritances in bankrolling Rangers then they can move aside and let fresh blood take up the reins. Rinse & Repeat, again and again.
They don’t have the patience for the only rational rescue plan. They’ve wasted the last 12 years trying to catch Sellic rather than building and growing the Club in a controlled and sustainable way. All they have done is delayed the starting point of
the ‘Real Journey’ they have to undertake.
There’s no easy fix in the Real World.
James apologies for the seemingly random formatting of paragraphs on my previous post.
Always seems to happen when I try to edit the piece before posting.
Always appears OK from my end.
May just be me but I think the rangers might be worth less than a pound now….just saying.
So it’s Regime change at that’s being asked for by Who exactly. I think they would bite your hand off if it was offered but and there is always a but, who to ? Is there anyone out there willing to take the chance with all of their baggage to circumvent not that they have anything worth while keeping in their 12 years of existence . So if they do manage to sell themselves to some poor sod or organisation they will be in for a rough ride trying to accommodate all of their needs.
I’ve said it before but for any Sevco enthusiasts reading (or having a grown up read it to them), here it is once more in golden retriever –
You are a loss-making business which nonetheless owns some valuable real estate.
The only people who would be interested in ‘investing’ in you are asset strippers.
They do not have you or your club’s best interests at heart, only their own.
If there were a host of benevolent ‘bears’ waiting in the wings to throw money into Sevco, do you not think they might have weighed in to do it long before now?
Even if there was, they wouldn’t be allowed to fund a mad spending splurge because it’s against the financial sustainability rules (rules ironically created to prevent bankruptcies through overspending!) – if it was, Newcastle would have already done it given who their owners are.
This is it for you, Billy. You are a smaller club, with a smaller stadium, less money, less commercial appeal, poorer quality players and inferior coaching staff. ‘The journey’ is over and this is the destination.
Final Destination for them Captain ! – Your premination hopefully comes true and true eternally !!!!
They the thick blue nosed supporters, now there’s a contradiction, should of course appreciate or know that investment equates to repayment later in the day. If the actually cared about their new 2nd chance chancer of a club they’d have the good sense to see that money is no longer made from paper and so doesn’t grow on the trees that are unfortunately for them continue still to be coloured green.
Believing the magic money tree investor will ride in and shake the tree for them again, another contradiction as Murray never actually did shake his own money, with a return is the fantasy they still hope and live for.
Talking of fantasy an ugly fat pizza faced hun from just down the road from me came waddling up the road enquiring after my health after a pretty bad period of illness. He came out with a G.O.T.’s quote after a superb win over D. Utd. Apparently!!! “ Chaos is a ladder”. I pointed out of course that ladders go downwards too; and backwards it would appear towards liquidation again. He called me a dirty fenian b…. and that death was too good for me. Fecking brilliant
Apparantly “Chaos is a ladder” – Aye and there are a multitude of Sevco Snakes slithering down these ladders in their nest of vipers SSMPM !!!
So this guy doesn’t get on with The Lying King then…
I don’t know who any of The Scummy’s of The Scummy Scottish Football Media but aren’t all of them allegedly eating outta this guy’s hand…
Funny this imbecile has broken ranks then –
Oh hey – When thieves fall out and all of that !
The gib and shameless liar hovering like a smell inside the Ibrox toilets.
their whole club is a mess.And this word entitlement bugs me.
they think their above us,that will be right,their day is coming no sympathy from me,
Your are right Larsson there is a coming but this is not akin to the second coming that being of a Savior . There is nobody there for them only the Cliff Edge and just like the lemmings over they go.