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Keith Jackson just gave his verdict on the Patrick Stewart sit-down. And it’s bonkers.

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Image for Keith Jackson just gave his verdict on the Patrick Stewart sit-down. And it’s bonkers.

Today, as I suspected, Keith Jackson is in a rage. He is in a rage because the Ibrox CEO did not bring sunshine to his first sit-down with the press. Instead, there were a lot of things that the media and the Ibrox fans did not want to hear. Whilst I thought Stewart could have spelled things out in more detail all the news was grim, as I wrote the other day. This is why Jackson is unhappy. He apparently believes that the role of the CEO at Ibrox is to pander to the lunatic fringe.

So as usual, on a Monday, into this we go.

To dissecting Jackson’s article, to try to make some sense out of it.

Let’s do the headline first.

Patrick Stewart alienates (Ibrox) fans on brink of rebellion with a hamfisted debut that placates only one man – Keith Jackson

You see, right there we already have the first misapprehension that this guy is under. Stewart was not going in front of all those faces to “placate” anyone. What Ibrox needed more than anything was a little common sense and a little hard truth. It’s not the job of a CEO to placate people. He has a business to run.

Here’s Jackson’s sub-heading. And it’s more of the same.

Stewart spoke a great deal while saying almost nothing they actually wanted to hear

The Ibrox fans have enough people telling them nothing but what they want to hear. That’s what The Daily Record is for, and it’s a big part of why their club is a complete shambles from top to bottom.

Now we’re on the main body of the piece. And boy, oh boy …

Well, let’s give him his due, that was certainly one way of going about it.

As usual, we get a weird segue into the piece itself. But let’s not judge it on its technical skill, let’s judge it on the substance. Stewart made a decision to tell his audience a few home truths and to let them know the club is in a serious situation. I find it incredible that so many in the press, and on the Ibrox forums, are already calling this guy out when in fact he’s simply laying out the size of the job in front of him. There only was “one way to go about it” short of feeding these people more bluster and BS.

When Patrick Stewart chose to pop his head above the parapet on Saturday, it was widely anticipated the new Ibrox chief executive would indulge in the business of attempting to win friends and influence people. But, in fact, by adopting an approach which sailed dangerously close to tipping towards condescending, Stewart managed to placate absolutely no one.

Again, his job is not to “win friends and influence people.” He’s a business guy. His job is to make the numbers add up. A good CEO should not give a good goddamn whether he makes nice with the media or not. Our own CEO has not once sat in front of a single journalist for a single minute. He’s too busy for that, and hopefully this week too busy off signing the players that the manager needs and wants.

As usual, with any Jackson piece, we must deal with terrible writing as well, of course; “an approach which sailed dangerously close to tipping towards condescending” … it makes my teeth itch just reading that. It’s also a nonsensical statement. I read every word that guy said. He talked straight. If Jackson felt he was being condescending then I don’t know where. He won’t “pander” to the spoiled brat brigade. It’s about time someone over there stood up to that lot.

With the notable exception, of course, of Philippe Clement. If anything, his Saturday morning media briefing succeeded only in further antagonising and alienating a fan base which was already on the brink of mounting a full-scale rebellion against the men in charge of their club.

The men who last season alone carried £17 million in debts on behalf of those same fans who cannot even comprehend what a scenario which stripped that sum out of their first team squad would have meant. As for Clement, I could not agree more that he has already earned the sack … but I understand in part why it hasn’t been done yet. At some point that club has to pick a manager and stick with him … but we all know that means, on some level, accepting that they won’t be challenging us.

Stewart spoke a great deal while saying almost nothing they actually wanted to hear. It all amounted to a bad start for the man from Manchester United as well as recently appointed chairman Fraser Thornton. It was a surprisingly clumsy intervention which did absolutely nothing to take the sting out of yesterday’s visit from St Johnstone, during which sections of the home fans made their feelings perfectly clear with chants of ‘sack the board’.

Again, Jackson sounds like a spoiled brat himself. Does the Ibrox fan-base really just want a guy to sit there and tell them that everything will be just fine? That there’s nothing to worry about? Look across the world at the US right now, at the wildfires burning through LA. Would people there prefer it if Gavin Newsom went on TV and said, “there’s nothing to worry about, stay in your homes, the fire brigade has it all under control?” Or would that be seen as the height of dangerous folly?

The Ibrox club faces significant challenges on multiple fronts. They will, at some point, have to dispense with the manager and carry the huge financial cost of that. There’s no easy pitch to get his successor onboard either. The average “life expectancy” of an Ibrox manager has shrunk to 12 months. There is little money for signings. Austerity has arrived and it has arrived with the shriek of a meteor strike. Celtic is wealthy and strong and led by a master manager with a domestic win ratio of over 80%.

I find it pathetic that any serious journalist actually thought it was the role of the CEO to sit in front of the assembled media, including fan media, and “tell them what they wanted to hear.” This article could have been written by one of the Union Brats themselves, it is nothing but foot stamping petulance.

By walking out of Ibrox after 55 minutes of an otherwise routine win over an almost certainly doomed St Johnstone, they stuck two fingers up at Stewart and the rest of those in the comfy seats of the directors’ box. Stewart’s biggest mistake was his failure to come across as a man with a plan and a mandate to provide the current regime with some much needed clear, strategic thinking . It all felt a bit too much like – meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The guy is in the door a couple of weeks! And you wanted him to have a plan instantly to hand? That’s not how it works, you moron. He’s announced the strategic review; that’s what produces an eventual plan. And you know what? Anyone with a shred of common sense would have known that’s exactly what he was going to do, because it’s Item A on any new CEO’s To Do list at a company which is underperforming its biggest rival, and which is posting annual losses of eight figure sums.

Now, I don’t think the results of that strategic review are going to be terribly popular either. With losses like that, the only sensible course of action will to be start cutting things and slashing budgets, but that’s by the by. In terms of a blueprint for getting there, anyone who expected this guy to produce that at the first sit-down with the media has spent too long with his head lodged up his own backside.

As to the protest yesterday … well that was a resounding success, wasn’t it? Jackson probably thinks so. It’s the kind of childish tantrum which appeals to him, but all it did was show up the lack of support the Union Brats had amongst the wider fan-base. Those directors were a little more comfortable in their chairs 57 minutes into that game and anyone who thinks otherwise is a clown.

Both he and Thornton need to change the perspective and move the dial where the fans are concerned. First, they must rid themselves of the suspicion they are there merely to facilitate the wishes of the investors who have failed so spectacularly to move the club forward over much of the last decade or so.

I have news for you Keithy; they are there to facilitate the wishes of the investors! Those are the people who hired them. Those are the people pulling the strings. Or did you think that the CEO and the chairman were coming in to run counter to the wishes of the people who own the club? You said the key word without even knowing it; investors. And these “investors” do not want to keep pouring their own money into this bottomless pit.

They’ve probably spent upwards of £80 million of their own money keeping on the lights in their time running the club. This is a fact Jackson, and others, want to ignore.

If those people walk, nobody who comes in to replace them is going to do that. They have backed managers with cold hard cash; is it their fault that the managers have squandered the money? This whole article is ludicrous.

“I need to make some tough decisions, it comes with the role, but I am committed to making the right ones for (the club), not just the popular ones,” Stewart said without a hint of irony. By nailing his colours to Clement’s mast – for the time being at least – he’s playing a high-risk game.

So Jackson thinks that it is his job to make only popular decisions!

Christ sake, I wonder some days how this guy ever got a job as a journalist. But let me tell you, with this kind of business acumen he was never getting to run a till at Tesco far less find a place in any profession which would have paid him a salary comparable to what The Record pisses away on him.

Because if results do not turn around dramatically in the short term then Stewart will have no option but to conduct a hasty reverse ferret and that would leave a huge question mark over his own judgment and decision-making.

Stewart already said that his support for Clement is conditional on results improving. So how would having to sack him at some point constitute a reversal of any sort?

If a 15-point gap at the top of the table is no longer a sacking offence then what does that say about how far standards have been allowed to drop under this regime? Likewise, if the CEO backs Clement one week then has to fire him the next then the Ibrox supporters will quite understandably have concerns and reservations about his own suitability for the job.

I agree. It should be a sacking offence. I am flabbergasted that Clement is still in a job.

But the Ibrox board is facing only tough choices. I recognise that at some point they need to give someone a clear run at it, and let the chips fall where they may in the hope that at the end of it some growth has taken place. I don’t believe Clement is that guy, but I understand why they might give him the opportunity.

Because they’ve seen quite enough of Clement to reach their own damning verdict and they deserve to be listened to rather than told that the people at the helm know better than they do.

They do not “deserve to be listened to.” The Ibrox fan-base is one of the dumbest on the planet, and they are completely divorced from reality. You need only look at the written words here of one of their own; Jackson, allegedly a serious journalist who thinks that Stewart should have gone in there and fed them a diet of comforting bullshit rather than share some hard truths. Short of “sack the manager and sack the board” – leaving the club without a head coach or the people whose job it is to find another one; lot of logic in that, eah? – what great wisdom and insight have the fans brought to this?

These people know what managerial excellence looks like. There’s quite literally a statue to it recently erected outside their own stadium. Walter Smith set that particular bar and against it all others will be judged. More than a year into the job, the awkward and obvious truth is Clement simply doesn’t come close to matching the standards of the great man.

Walter Smith’s “leadership” is one of the reasons that the club playing out of Ibrox right now is Rangers In Name Only. He was one of the people most directly responsible for steering that club into the abyss.

If you want to put it in context, here’s an interesting figure; The Great Walter had a win ratio in his second tenure at Ibrox of 62.86%. That’s lower than Warburton. That’s lower than Michael Beale. That’s lower than McCoist and Gerrard. And guess what? It’s lower than that currently held by Phillipe Clement. You know why Smith won things with Rangers in his second spell? Because we couldn’t get our own act together, which our own CEO at the time carries some responsibility for.

Forget about paying for hired help to carry out an independent report by pulling up the drains behind the scene at Auchenhowie. Ibrox fans have conducted a root and branch review of the Belgian and they have concluded, en masse, that they can no longer tolerate his inability to put a consistent, winning team on the pitch. Stewart was right about one thing. Sacking a manager does not provide a silver bullet solution.

First, you bring in independent consultants because they have no “skin in the game” and will give you the real and the raw and tell you where the cuts need to come. That way nobody at the club can complain if their department gets axed. That’s standard stuff. Secondly, the Ibrox fans are not geniuses.

Anyone can see that Clement is floundering; some of us reached that conclusion before they did.

Third, the acknowledgement that Stewart is correct about how there are no silver bullet solutions is the Whiplash Moment for this piece, when something Jackson writes contradicts everything that has come before. If there are no silver bullet solutions, then what the Hell is he moaning about? He basically agrees with Stewart on the main point.

No, the silver bullet comes with identifying and securing the services of a manager who is genuinely worthy of standing in Smith’s shadow. There is nothing at all to be gained by stubbornly standing by the manager when that manager plainly isn’t capable of managing.

Hahaha! Yeah, let’s bring in another guy who can get a 62% win ratio!

And what’s the pitch to this genius, if he’s out there?

“Come in and work with a substandard squad, limited resources and constant, relentless pressure. Come and work against Brendan Rodgers who has more cash to spend, a better team than you do and a club which isn’t rocked by internecine warfare. And you have to deliver success immediately.”

Gentlemen, form an orderly queue.

Stewart was also correct though to talk about the wider, far-ranging issues which have done so much to hamper the club’s progress. And if he is as bold and as astute as the position demands, that’s when he may find himself crossing swords with the very people who are signing his pay cheques.

Not in this lifetime. You ever heard the term “the rod draws the lightning”? That’s what a good CEO is for. He’s there to make the tough decisions and cop the flak on behalf of those above him. Their mandate is clear; get the cost base down so we don’t have to keep carrying the debts, and put in place a management team who recognise that we’re working with restrictions.

Because in order for Ibrox to be properly fixed, the club will require a recalibration from the top down. One look around the room at the next board meeting should show Stewart and Thornton where the fundamental problems lie.

Just tell me what they could have done different, except in that they might have at some point said “we’re not doing this anymore. The books need to balance from here on in.” I’m serious; if Jackson can tell me where these people could have done better I’ll buy him a beer. They are second because Celtic is first. They are second because Celtic is strong and successful and rich. And that’s down to us. They are not the only football board living in the shadow of a more successful rival.

Alistair Johnston and Graeme Park might be well-meaning but their reputation and standing have become horribly tarnished by a succession of missteps. They represent a period of internal squabbling and chronic judgment that has rendered (the club) as the permanent runner-up in a two-horse race.

No, they are simply in place at a time when Celtic is running like a Swiss watch. You cannot blame them for that. As for those mis-step and mishaps … weren’t they all caused by James Bisgrove? I thought I read that somewhere … oh yeah, it was in your columns wasn’t it Keithy? Did someone trick you there?

But at least they’re present. The same can hardly ever be said of the Ibrox club’s three other non- executive directors – Julian Wolhardt, George Taylor, John Halsted – all of whom seem perfectly comfortable in their roles as absentee landlords.

Who occasionally have to write very large cheques. I don’t know … in their shoes I wouldn’t expect statues in the carpark as such, but a little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss, if you know what I mean?

These men have been hanging around – albeit from quite some considerable distance – for years now but really, what have they achieved in all of that time? The vast majority of Ibrox fans would struggle to pick any of the three of them out in an identity parade, never mind quantifying what it is they have contributed to the cause as almost entirely silent partners.

What does Jackson want them to do? Launch a coup?

Wolhardt and Taylor were last spotted somewhere in the Far East. Halsted monitors events from the other side of the Pond. But this lack of boots on the ground is symptomatic of a club which has lost any sense of structure or leadership.

I have, from time to time, questioned what our own non-executive directors do. I suspect that this is not terribly unusual. It’s certainly not a symptom of dysfunctionality. Constantly spending more than your earn … that is symptom of dysfunctionality.

It’s Stewart’s job now to front it all up and to provide (the club) with some kind of direction. Which is why he missed a trick the other day when he assumed the mantle of communicating with the paying customers and somehow managed to make the relationship between the board and the fan base even more fractured than it already was.

Yeah, bad writing aside, you seem to think the “direction” he needs to travel in is one which is more to the liking of the fans. Which is moronic. He has inherited a shambles and it’s his job to clean up a very big mess. If he starts pandering to the mad mob over there he’s finished before he even gets started.

Ultimately, Stewart will have to be judged on his action rather than on his words. But the new man hasn’t helped himself with his hamfisted, ill-thought-out introduction to the supporters and he has much to do in order to ensure that first impressions don’t last longer than he does.

Because that’s just what the club needs; more turmoil. More bloodshed.

Sack the CEO when he’s still early in the job.

Because that would make them look like the model of good governance, wouldn’t it?

That would suggests that the adults are running the room.

At some stage sanity has to prevail over there. At some stage knee-jerk reactions like this have to give way to sober, serious thought … or so you’d think.

But this is the reason I can write a piece which is a wholehearted defence of the new Ibrox CEO. I know – I know for a fact – that Jackson and people like him will eventually force this guy to see things their way. Because everyone who has ever taken a senior role at that club eventually gets consumed by its lunacy.

This guy is in the gig a matter of weeks and he’s given one press conference. He’s sat down with the media and tried to give an honest overview of events and already he’s under pressure because he didn’t give the fans more of what they wanted.

Their forums are also boiling with rage at Stewart, and that too is exactly what I thought would happen.

Everyone at that club works amidst mayhem and madness. They need a spell of quiet reflection and then a steady rebuilding job which might take years; nobody over there is ever going to get any of that, and Jackson proves it today with his petulant rant.

The media is full of people who think this way and the Ibrox stands, of course, are the same. Eventually, even the smartest operators over there either step out because they know they’ll get nowhere, or they end up doing what Jackson expected this guy to do; they pander to the mob and the madness goes on.

And madness will eventually overcome any plan which this guy tries to put in place. I strongly suspect that the strategic review is going to be greeted with similar scorn to his first interview, and so to be blunt the guy doesn’t stand a chance.

Photo by Craig Foy/SNS Group via Getty Images

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10 comments

  • Dan says:

    I agree with everything you have written but to be honest, more interested in Celtic’s transfer window than their shit show. We need at least a couple real quality players to help if we qualify for the next round of the CL and bed in ready for CL qualifying next season. So far it has been depressingly familiar, none in the door early. Looking on with interest now awaiting what the “Dr” pulls out of his hat.

    • ivenogoatwan says:

      I think you’re right Dan regards our own activity in the transfer market,all I have heard about is a left back and another winger,when are we going to get a tough midfield enforcer,in the mould of Lennon,broonie,vanyama etc because we are far too powder puff light in midfield,as has been shown against sevco and Bruges,so I hope we are looking not just for another winger and a left back, we’re now mid January and no sign of anyone being signed and I don’t think Kieran is the man for left back,too injury prone especially playing against the thugs and hammer throwers in the SPFL.

  • Pilgrim73 says:

    How do you begin to improve the fortunes of a club that required £37.5m in loans last season? A club that lost £17m in a single season and already sits at a 70% wages to income ratio.
    From the outside it looks like an insurmountable challenge. They need to stop defining success as winning titles and calibrate expectations to simply being run on a break even basis.
    If a ship is sinking you through everything overboard that is weighing it down to buy some time, in their case this means some tough choices. Do they really need a dedicated training complex? It must be a huge drain on resources, sell it and rent a facility.
    They could win some brownie points by ditching the sports science department.
    They should be working night & day to remove players from the wage bill. How can you have a squad value of 40m and be paying 60m in wages, I appreciate this figure isn’t solely player wages but is still out of proportion.
    You have said many times that you believe this year’s accounts will be grimer by far, if this is indeed the case, are we looking at a club facing administration?

  • terry the tim says:

    If Rangers supporters read your excellent break down they would be far more able to understand the reality of the situation they are in.
    I think the new Rangers CEO would be pleased with your assessment.
    The future cost cutting and debts reminds me of Celtics predicament in the 1990’s before Fergus came in when the old board was in place.

    • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

      It cannot be ‘Rangers’ fans reading his excellent breakdown Terry…

      Definitely Sevco fans though !

  • AdoptedBairn says:

    I think I’ve said this on here before on here, but The Rangers need an Anne Budge (post Romanov) with a suitably funded “investment vehicle” to buy the business after a pre-pack administration.
    In my opinion, the new man’s external experts need to be either corporate recovery specialist or insolvency practitioners.
    Finally, why was it not mentioned that despite struggling on the pitch, St. Johnstone posted a profit in its last financial year?

  • TonyB says:

    The more people like Keech tell ra peepo what they want to hear the better it is for us.

    Long may they stew in their delusion.

  • JimBhoyback says:

    Read an article earlier suggesting Clemente and Stewart were at loggerheads already as the manager wants 3-4 players in and Stewart suggesting 1-2 max… The manager can go and pick out 30 players he wants but end of the day unless the dynamic changes (ie, others leaving for profit) then he will have a max budget for new players as Stewart keeps the business afloat and compliant.

    Jackson just playing to the crowd. Going to paper and saying Stewart is right, they have to cut their cloth accordingly, some austerity measures needed, must sell before they bring in etc, well it just would not sell papers. He knows that though. So stick to the narrative, the one that killed the first klub.

  • JT says:

    Walter Smith success second time around owes more to the assistance from the SFA than any failings at Celtic.

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    Oh Wow – That guy’s pain is utterly, utterly the most immense schadenfreude for sure !!!

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