The “football finance expert” is talking rubbish again and giving Ibrox fans more false hope.

Season two of Aaron Sorkin’s drama The Newsroom introduces a character named Jerry Dantana. He joins the ACN team after they lose one of their key operatives to an election campaign. Straight away, there’s a bit of suspicion within the newsroom about Dantana, largely due to his reputation as something of a wannabe.

Without giving away too much for anyone who hasn’t seen it and might watch it later—because, overall, it’s pretty good, despite some ups and downs—let’s just say Dantana’s reputation isn’t unfounded. His actions lead to a couple of serious problems, and I’ll leave it at that for now.

One of the things wrong with Dantana is that, in his pursuit of fame and his need to put himself at the centre of his stories, he’s willing to rely on sources with their own agendas—fellow wannabes, in fact. This reminds me of Kieran Maguire, and although I understand why he does what he does, I can only assume that the people who call him a “football finance expert” don’t know much about football or finance. They simply take his word for it.

I’ve spoken about Maguire before because he always seems to pop up whenever Scottish football finance is being discussed. What never fails to amaze me is how astonishingly naïve he is. He’s fallen for every bit of PR spin coming out of Ibrox and has repeatedly talked up the financial situation at that club. I don’t claim to be a finance expert myself, but I can count. Maguire is wrong far more often than he’s right.

Maguire is a wannabe. However, I don’t believe too many legitimate finance professionals would agree with what he spouts. His latest contribution to the Scottish football finance debate is especially ridiculous. He suggests that any team in the top six of the SPL is an attractive prospect for a takeover.

There’s only one club in the top six that meets the traditional definition of “attractive to investors,” and that’s ours. No other team even comes close. Investors in Scottish football have come and gone over the years, and only one—Fergus McCann—left with his reputation enhanced and his pockets full of cash. Every other investor has walked away much poorer, with the possible exception of Charles Green. At least Fergus didn’t have to face court cases after his departure.

Maguire seems to believe that, just because Scottish clubs are now selling players for decent fees, there’s been some sort of shift. Player sales alone, however, aren’t enough. They happen too sporadically for most clubs to rely on them. To sell players, you first need to spend money to buy talent, and most Scottish clubs simply don’t have the funds for that. Occasionally, a team like Aberdeen might get lucky. They signed Bojan Miovski for a fee in the hundreds of thousands and sold him for millions. But it doesn’t mean they cracked the code.

This is something the Ibrox club still doesn’t seem to grasp. We spend real money to sign the players we eventually sell. The process is risky and inconsistent. While it’s possible to develop players like Matt O’Riley and sell them on for a vast profit in a short time, it’s rare, which is why it’s seen as exceptional business when it works.

If your business model depends solely on the transfer market, you’d better hope the current system holds together. There are so many factors that could cause it to collapse. If the market south of the border crashes, the bubble bursts, and suddenly it’s game over. It won’t just be the English clubs that suffer—investors will lose fortunes, and Scottish clubs reliant on those deals will feel the pain too. Perhaps Maguire is unaware that the transfer system itself was challenged in court just last month. And to some extent, the challenge was successful.

I’ve written before about why I don’t think that case will make a huge difference. Both UEFA and FIFA have said it only concerns a single paragraph in the transfer regulations. In my view, all they need to do is tweak that paragraph and find a better way to word it.

I suspect that’s what will happen. But here’s the thing—if I had millions of pounds riding on this outcome, I wouldn’t bet on it.

It’s an incredibly risky wager because that court case has a long way to go. There are also developments in England, particularly the Manchester City case, which could become tangled up with this. If that happens, suddenly we could be facing a whole new problem. All it takes is for a group of lawyers and the European Court to rule differently than FIFA or UEFA expect, and the foundations of the current transfer system could be wiped out in an instant.

If I were an investor about to gamble my money on a Scottish club, hoping to turn a profit based on player sales, prudence would suggest holding off for now.

The theory appears to hinge on the idea that Europe is a golden goose for clubs—this view doesn’t account for the harsh realities of the modern game. The money in the lower-tier competitions, like the Conference League, isn’t fantastic. The Europa League offers more, but those returns rely on consistently winning matches, which is anything but straightforward.

If anyone had bought Hearts, for example, with the expectation of regular European competition, how would they feel now? Such assumptions are fraught with risk, especially for clubs outside of Celtic’s orbit, where getting to the Groups, from next season onward, will be even more hit and miss. Does this guy not follow developments in the game at all?

The entire concept rests on the fragile notion of consistent European football, and then further, on clubs’ abilities to sell players to England for exorbitant fees. To me, that business model seems precarious at best. Am I the only one who feels this plan teeters on the edge of delusion?

Even Celtic, a far better-run club, doesn’t provide the sort of returns Maguire seems to imagine. Yes, we’ll likely post a profit this year, and in the low eight figures, which pales in comparison to the monumental cost of acquiring a club like ours. The profit largely hinges on two highly unpredictable factors: player sales and Champions League qualification, neither of which guarantees enough revenue to make investing in the club a slam-dunk.

The cold truth is that the only way to make serious money from a club in Scotland is through a predatory takeover.

This is no secret, as similar methods have been tried in England with clubs of comparable size and revenue to Scotland’s mid-table teams. What have those takeovers resulted in? Assets sold off, stadiums mortgaged, and operations run on a shoestring budget, with squad costs slashed.

This isn’t football—it’s basic business practice. Strip a club down to its barest essentials, charge the fans as much as possible without scaring them away, and keep the lights on just long enough to squeeze out some profit. It’s been done to death across Europe, and yet people still dive in with blind faith, only to lose a fortune.

Take Inverness Caley Thistle, for example. The club owes £3.6 million to its directors. These directors were content to carry losses until they hit a point where they decided they wouldn’t do it anymore. Now, the club is on the brink. They could hand it over to anyone willing to pay the bills, but there’s that pesky £3.6 million debt hanging over everything, and naturally, they want it back. Why shouldn’t they? This is business, not charity.

Hearts, Aberdeen, and the club from Ibrox are all similarly beholden to their “investors.” These people are, to varying degrees, carrying the weight of the clubs’ debts. If they ever choose—or are forced—to stop, those clubs will be staring down the barrel. The Ibrox club is already in trouble because its directors have pulled back from pouring more cash in, and they’ve made it clear they won’t continue indefinitely.

Will investors at Hearts and Aberdeen keep footing the bill? It’s possible, but history suggests otherwise. Sooner or later, these people will realise they’re just throwing good money after bad and will put an end to it. When that happens, brutal cost-cutting will become unavoidable, and things will get even bleaker from there.

It’s becoming more apparent that people like Maguire, who peddle these pie-in-the-sky ideas, are out of touch with the brutal realities of football economics even as they pretend to be expert on them. No “expert” – Hell, nobody who could do basic maths – would have said something so daft. If this is the sort of advice he’s offering, no wonder he’s podcasting instead of actively managing investments. I wouldn’t trust him with the spare change in my pocket.

And how did I come across this nonsense? It was published by an Ibrox fan site, parading this economist’s words as proof that their club is a tempting target for a takeover. Someone sent it to me, asking for my take, and I’m staggered by how gullible these Peepul continue to be. Once again, they’re being fed fairy tales.

I’ve said time and again that their club is ripe for a takeover, but not in the way they dream of. The reality is more akin to the scenarios I’ve described above: a predatory buyout that strips the club bare, slashes costs, and runs it at the bare minimum. Even then, to make serious money, they’d likely need to sell the stadium to an outside entity. Fans like to believe that protections are in place to prevent this, that they’d never allow it—but there are loopholes.

One alternative would be to sell off future income, like season ticket sales, by mortgaging that revenue through bonds, as Arsenal did to finance their stadium. There are always ways around these so-called safeguards, ways that would leave fans none the wiser until it was too late. When you own a club, its assets belong to you, and you can do what you like with them.

In the end, the idea that the Ibrox club could somehow be protected from the ravages of a predatory takeover is just a fantasy. Sure, their fans would be furious. The media would have a field day. Even the Scottish Parliament would probably get involved, all up in arms.

But none of that would matter if some foreign investors came in and took control. They wouldn’t care one bit what people in Scotland thought or said. They wouldn’t even need to step foot in the country. They could just hire some polished spokesperson to take the heat, someone who’d be more than happy to collect a fat salary while ignoring the outcry.

The warnings are everywhere in football.

England is full of clubs that have been gutted by these kinds of takeovers. Just look at Coventry City. In 2007, they were a Championship side with hope. Then Sisu Capital bought them. A decade later, the club had no stadium, no training ground, no youth academy. They were bottom of League One, and spiralling towards League Two, after burning through four different managers in a year.

York City’s Douglas Craig is another disaster story. Craig didn’t even sign the Kick It Out pledge against racism—how’s that for priorities? He sold York City’s stadium to a holding company he owned for a couple of hundred grand. Then, in a move that could only be described as shameless, he tried to sell it back to the club for £4.5 million when he decided he wanted out.

The Oyston family at Blackpool are infamous for a reason. They somehow got Blackpool to the Premier League, but then watched as they slid back into League Two, leaving a trail of chaos and allegations. You can search the details yourself—there’s a long history there and the Oyston’s are notorious for suing anyone who dares to speak up, even their own fans.

And, of course, there’s the recent near-miss with Everton and 777 Partners. This investment group, already tangled up in clubs like Standard Liege, Genoa, and Hertha Berlin, nearly took control of Everton. Then, in a twist last week, they collapsed. There’s a £200 million loan in the middle of that wreckage, just waiting to explode. That is the kind of financial minefield you end up dealing with when you hand your club over to vultures like this.

And guess who popped up to inform BBC Sport that Everton fans had dodged a bullet? Yes, the same Kieran Maguire, the football finance “expert” who makes a career out of stating the obvious when he’s not busy spouting utter nonsense.

What we’re seeing here is the same delusion as exists at Ibrox. They always believe their club is on the verge of some great takeover by benevolent billionaires who will swoop in and make everything right. But that’s not how the real world works.

Any serious investor coming into Scottish football—especially into a club like that—is going to do it the same way they do in England. They’ll strip the club bare, cut everything to the bone, sell off whatever assets they can, and figure out how to squeeze every last penny out of the fans. That’s the only way to make it profitable. And when it’s all said and done, the fans will be left standing in the rubble, wondering how it all went so wrong.

The fairies at the bottom of the garden don’t exist. But the predators circling the gates at Ibrox and elsewhere? They’re all too real.

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