If Dave King is looking to sell up, that spells bad news for the board he leaves behind.

The other day, Keith Jackson wrote an intriguing piece on Dave King, slamming the former Ibrox chairman and arguing that the last thing the club needed was his return.

I’ve written extensively on that subject already, and I happen to agree with Jackson. King’s return would be nothing short of disastrous for the club—a catastrophe of monumental proportions—and they simply cannot afford to take that step.

But today, I discovered that Jackson has gone even further and touched on something I was planning to write myself regarding King and his activities at the club.

Some readers of this blog have already commented on what they believe is happening, and they seem to share my view. King appears to be looking for a way out. It can’t be anything else. He is trying to create enough friction between himself and the Ibrox board that he can justify a sale to new investors while painting himself as the martyr in the eyes of the fans.

That’s how he will spin it. King will claim that the board has left him no choice but to sell, and that the new buyers will come in, shake things up, and bring real money to the table. Whether or not any of this is true will be irrelevant. But it looks to some like King has had preliminary talks with someone, and he’s laying the groundwork for his exit.

There was interest from one American-led group last year—Kyle Fox’s consortium. The Ibrox board denied any talks had taken place, but Fox and her group seemed fairly confident that something had been discussed. The board even threatened legal action over the matter, but it never went to court, and the issue faded away. Still, it was apparent to almost everyone that contact had been made between someone at Ibrox and these mysterious Americans.

We’ve long suspected that someone was King himself. So, when he talks about American investment, it’s plausible that they are the people he has in mind.

Jackson’s latest revelation—that some members of the Ibrox board may now be ready to sell—takes this a step further. It suggests that they are worried about another boardroom coup, potentially backed by King and these American investors. They foresee a prolonged period of turmoil at the club and understandably want no part of it.

Looking at Celtic right now, the financial gulf between us and the Ibrox club is already vast, and it’s only going to widen.

As I mentioned in a previous article, a single Champions League win for us has more financial impact than their much-touted shirt sponsorship increase. They can boast about record commercial deals all they want, but when we can eclipse those gains with one night of football, it shows just how hopeless it is for them in trying to catch up under the current circumstances.

The word “investment” is laughable when used in the context of that club.

Any new money that comes in will almost certainly be spent on the playing squad in a desperate attempt to close the gap, but that is a massive gamble.

If it fails—and there’s every chance that it would—it’s game over. They’ll have dug themselves a deeper hole, and this time, there will be no escape as UEFA’s Financial Sustainability regulations would come into play. Administration is not off the table.

So, what’s the potential upside for the Americans if they do come in? If this Fox group is legitimate and King is indeed preparing to sell, what’s their end game? How do they expect to make money from a club with so few valuable assets left? Even King knows the fans can’t be squeezed any more than they already are, and UEFA’s financial rules leave no wiggle room for reckless spending.

And before they even got round to that subject, you’d have to deal with the civil war. There would be yet another period of board-room bloodletting. More upheaval and instability. The new shareholders would want control. The Ibrox board would resist. King would run to the fans and the media and tell them all that the current directors were standing in the way of the brave new dawn, and how could they hope to survive the firestorm?

If they want out, if Jackson is right, then it’s because they can see that coming a mile away and don’t want anything to do with it. And who could blame them?

So, the Americans might get control more easily than they think. It’s not impossible that some of the existing directors sell directly to them, just to get out of the line of fire. But once you enact your coup you have to run the kingdom. So what then?

The first and most obvious route to raising cash is to rebrand the stadium. A naming rights deal could bring in guaranteed money that would help towards future UEFA audits.

But how much is that deal worth? I know for a fact that Celtic have explored this idea multiple times over the past two decades and have consistently rejected it. If Ibrox hasn’t signed such a deal yet, it’s likely because it’s not seen as particularly lucrative. Still, the Americans may have contacts or strategies that could make it viable, at least for their consortium if not the club.

It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where the Americans strike a deal with some corporation, pocket most of the proceeds and toss the club a few scraps. Suddenly, games at that ground are taking place at “The Tostitos Stadium” or something equally farcical.

Beyond that, they could look at other assets.

Perhaps they’ll rebrand the training ground or revive the idea of a separate organisation to manage youth development, selling off the rights to outside bodies or hiving it off as a separate profit centre for themselves instead of the club.

But again, what does that do to the club’s long-term competitive state? It’s hard to say. But it’s also hard to believe that hard nosed finance types would particularly care.

Ultimately, the stadium remains their most bankable asset. The prospect of selling Ibrox to a corporation, even one owned by the consortium itself, and leasing it back shouldn’t be dismissed. It has happened across football and in other sports, and these are people who are driven by the bottom line.

Even if these Americans are coming in for the PR boost of owning a football club, they have to consider the consequences if the club isn’t successful. Any goodwill they might hope to gain would evaporate if the fans feel short-changed, especially since those supporters have been conditioned to demand more and more spending to compete with us.

No one is sinking big money into the second-largest club in Scotland without expecting a return, and that return is getting harder to justify the outlay with every set of figures Celtic publish.

If King is indeed planning to sell and already has a buyer lined up, I can fully understand why the other Ibrox directors might want to bail out quickly. They’d want to avoid the chaos that’s sure to follow.

What will come next won’t be a resurgence; it will be something much darker—something this blog and others have warned about for years. A real reckoning, the kind that can take generations to recover from.