“The Yanks are coming!” But Jackson’s exclusive shouldn’t have Celtic fans losing any sleep.

Last night, we got the double whammy. A Keith Jackson piece, dripping with all the usual stupidity—an “exclusive” at that—and a new Ibrox fan moonbeam. The San Francisco 49ers’ billionaire owners are supposedly coming in to save the club and pump millions into a vast transfer war chest.

And I wonder: who are the stupider people here? The billionaires who would invest in a bankrupt Scottish football club and pour money down a black hole? The journalist who believes anything remotely on that level is likely? Or the fans for whom this was written—who, I’m sure, have spent the last 12 hours lapping it up?

All I know is that a story like this has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

The fact that Jackson not only had the exclusive—but The Sun also ran it—strongly suggests that someone’s PR operation is in full swing. As always, he’s promoting it without questioning a single bit of it, which is embarrassing for him and every other media outlet blindly running the story.

Let’s start with the obvious point. To assume a major interest in the Ibrox club, you’d need to pick up around 50% of the shareholding. That’s not impossible. It’s also not cheap. Not only would you have to buy shares from their current holders, but you’d also have to pay off the club’s debts to those same people. The cost would run into tens of millions before you ever spent another penny.

Forget anything else you might sink into the operation—those tens of millions are essentially gone. There is no prospect of ever seeing a proper return on these so-called investments. For that reason alone, this story sounds suspect … I’m not saying it’s not true, it just might not be true in the way their club would want.

English football is littered with damaged clubs who were bought by smiling “investors” who promised the earth and then pursued every avenue they could to get their money back. There are reasons for the Ibrox fans to be concerned here.

But let’s do what we do with articles by this writer: let’s dismantle this Keith Jackson piece, paragraph by paragraph, point by ludicrous point, and see if we can work out what the hell is really going on.

The headline is sensationalist and deliberately so:

San Francisco 49ers in Ibrox takeover talks and stunning bid is at ‘advanced stage

It suggests the whole club is on the brink of being bought, lock, stock, and barrel. It all sounds very impressive. And at “advanced stage”? That could mean anything. It’s all designed to make this sound bigger than it is.

Here’s the subheading:

If an agreement can be thrashed out, the Ibrox club stands to benefit from a major cash injection from the American backers.

And there it is, right there—the first “if” in the story.

And what does a “major cash injection” even mean? How will it manifest? Because that club definitely needs something, but as I pointed out earlier, the initial major cash injection wouldn’t even go into the club itself—it would go straight into the pockets of existing shareholders.

Here’s Jackson’s opening paragraph:

The Ibrox club are at the centre of a potentially transformative US-led takeover bid – a deal that would see them bankrolled by the enormous financial muscle of the San Francisco 49ers.

It is immediately obvious that Jackson hasn’t stumbled onto this story himself. Someone has fed it to him. And if he believes it—and is crawling out on a limb like this—that someone is inside Ibrox.

So what exactly is this? Talks of some sort are definitely underway, and if you were an Ibrox director you would badly want out if there was an out available to you. You would also, if a deal was imminent, want to make damned sure you sold it as something that the fans should welcome with open arms.

This is how Craig Whyte grabbed control of Rangers. All those “Motherwell born billionaire” stories actually came from a PR firm’s press release, which Jackson swallowed whole.

You can see here that this story has actual billionaires in it … but this sort of big talking is par for the course with any takeover. Charles Green did the same when he bought the assets of Rangers. King did it when he launched his own takeover bid. There’s nothing new under this particular sun.

Where I get suspicious is when the chief executive recently sat down with the club’s official media channel for an interview. If this story was imminent, there would have been some hint, some nod or wink in that interview.

But there wasn’t. So what can we glean from that? Either the chief executive knows nothing about this, or he’s painting a deliberately downbeat picture—because his interview was all about hard times and hard choices.

If the glory days were just around the corner, he wouldn’t be talking like that.

Something doesn’t compute.

The Daily Record has learned top-level discussions over a multi-million-pound investment began before the turn of the year – and they are now believed to be at ‘an advanced stage’. And if an agreement can be thrashed out, the Ibrox club stands to benefit from a major cash injection which would then fund a spending splurge in the summer transfer market.

Let’s break this down.

And believe me, I know you’re waiting for the good bit. You’re dying to see what I say about the good bit. Be patient. We’ll get there.

First, “The Daily Record has learned”—what does that actually mean? It means they’ve been told. Someone inside the club has gone to them and said, “You’ll never guess what’s happening behind the scenes.”

This isn’t investigative journalism. It’s spoon-fed PR.

The last time he patted himself and his paper this hard on the back was when the Motherwell Born Billionaire made a mug out of him. When people are briefing you, you should always be suspicious of their motivations.

But Jackson doesn’t care.

Someone inside Ibrox has told him this is happening, and as usual, he’s either going along for the ride or being taken for one. You can pick your cliché.

Right there is another choice phrase: if an agreement can be thrashed out.

So straight away, we know that this has a ways to go.

There are writers much closer to the Ibrox operation than Jackson.

Fan media outlets consider themselves practically part of the furniture over there, and yet, none of them have been briefed on this. Would they have missed a story of this magnitude? Why is somebody at the club using a guy nobody inside trusts and nobody in the fanbase respects?

Now we get to the good bit—the major cash injection that will supposedly give the manager a transfer war chest. That’s not the exact phrase Jackson used, but we get the general drift.

And my dear God. Oh my dear God.

You have to wonder which part of this is so hard for these people to understand.

Not even a week ago, their manager sat in front of the press and said—explicitly—that the wage bill had to be cut by 30%.

And that’s just to get the club’s financial position into some kind of working order. Those cuts aren’t optional; they’re necessary. A year and a half ago, their wage bill was larger than Celtic’s. Larger than that of a club that earns, on average, between £20-30 million more than they do every single year.

That might not matter to Keith and his ilk, but it certainly matters to UEFA.

Last season, clubs were only allowed to spend 80% of their turnover on wages, salaries, transfer fees, and agent fees. The Ibrox club were already dangerously close to crossing that line. The 30% cut is essential to get them under the revised warning line, which is now set at 70%.

Let me put this in simple terms.

If the Al Saud family bought this club tomorrow, they still wouldn’t be able to elevate its spending beyond 70% of turnover. That’s just how UEFA’s financial sustainability rules work. They are ironclad. The only way that club can spend more is if it earns more. That’s it. As simple as that. You can work it out on the back of a napkin. They can only spend more once they make more.

It’s not impossible that some organisation could come in and secure stadium naming rights. It’s not impossible that they could plaster Ibrox with corporate billboards. But it’s highly improbable because there is simply no way for an investor to see a meaningful return on that kind of outlay.

And unless something like that happens, their financial reality won’t change.

70% of turnover. That’s the only number that matters.

This is the same club that nickel-and-dimed their way through the January window without making a single notable signing. They couldn’t even afford £200k to bring Lyle Cameron in. That’s how serious the austerity measures are over there. The debt they’re about to post this season will make last year’s look like a bonanza in comparison.

Yet this moron—this supposed journalist—can’t count well enough to realise that what he’s written is a technical impossibility.

A technical impossibility.

Unless they pull off a massive transfer sale, they’ll be lucky if they can spend anything in the summer. And yet, Jackson expects us to believe that a multi-faceted deal like this—assuming it’s been months in the making—will not only be finalised in time, but will somehow miraculously provide a war chest that satisfies UEFA’s criteria?

If you’ve been following along so far, this is the moment where Jackson’s article veers off the road of sanity, plows through the tall grass, and barrels into the thick woods of madness.

I’ve said before that Jackson is not the worst journalist in the country. But he might be the stupidest. He is certainly the most willing to be used and abused by people at every level of the operation over there.

Sources from south of the border have confirmed one of the key men behind the proposal is Leeds United chairman Paraag Marathe – the man in charge of the NFL giants’ investment arm, 49ers Enterprises. Marathe – who is also executive vice president of football operations in San Francisco – was the architect in chief of a takeover of the Elland Road Club, which took a step closer to a Premier League return on Monday night with a dramatic late win over Sunderland.

And here’s where things get really fishy.

Marathe is in charge of the 49ers’ investment arm. And based solely on that link, Jackson has jumped to the conclusion that the 49ers are behind the bid. But unless he has way more information than he’s shared in this article, he has absolutely no basis for making that claim.

And the fact that the 49ers own Leeds? That’s meant to make this sound credible? It does nothing of the kind. It’s not remotely hard to understand why billionaires would want to own Leeds United. A sleeping giant in the English game, with potential to reach the Premier League and earn hundreds of millions in TV revenue.

That makes perfect sense.

It is, however, incredibly difficult to understand why billionaires would want to own a club in the SPFL. Especially an indebted, dysfunctional mess like the one across the city.

It’s understood he is now part of a consortium – including at least one other high-net-worth American business mogul – which hopes to restore (the club) to the top of the Scottish game after years spent languishing in the shadow of Old Firm rivals Celtic.

Ah, yes. High-net-worth American business mogul. No name. No details. Nothing to verify who this mystery man is.

And what have I been saying for years?

If and when a takeover bid eventually does come for that club, it won’t be in the form their fans expect or want, and without knowing who this person is, how can Ibrox fans possibly do their due diligence? And if they can’t do due diligence, how can they assess this person’s motivation?

That’s supposing they will even want to do so.

Imagine, for a second, that this story is all true. At least some of it has to be.

If I were a fan over there, I wouldn’t be getting excited. I’d be demanding hard facts. Because until those emerge, this is just another tall tale from the Jackson fantasy factory … and that’s the best case scenario.

Here’s another thing. If the 49ers group is behind this, they don’t need a consortium. They could buy the Ibrox club out of petty cash.

If the guy in question—the mystery man—is a high-net-worth individual, he could probably buy the Ibrox club whole himself.

So what’s the consortium for? What do you need a consortium for? And who else is making up this consortium? What exactly will the makeup of it be? Who will have the power? Who will have the influence within it? The nameless, faceless investor? Or even more nameless, faceless offshore funds?

If the “consortium” controls the majority of Ibrox’s shares, it’s incredibly important to know who runs the consortium. But when talk of transfer war chests is being bandied about, who amongst the fan-base really cares about that?

I can wholly understand why US sports billionaires would want to buy Leeds United. It’s not just about the possibility of turning an immense profit. If you can get that team into the top flight and make them a really big club again, you go from having an asset worth a couple of hundred million to one worth in excess of a billion. That’s enough money to go around for all the investors.

But there’s also a social status attached to that. It’s why so many football clubs are now in the hands of extremely wealthy people. They are status symbols. Where’s the status in owning the second biggest club in Scotland?

Since we know there’s no money to be made in a ramshackle Scottish Premiership club—because there is no money to be made in the Scottish Premiership, as we’ve gone over in several different articles, including yesterday’s piece about why the game didn’t radically change after 2012—I wonder what satisfaction these will get out of actually seeing their vision realised.

Unless their mystery investors are stone bigots with King Billy tattooed on their backside and a deep-seated desire to see “the Peepul” restored to their former power, I just wonder what they get out of it. It seems like an awful lot of money to spend just to make someone else’s fantasy a reality.

Because, sure as anything, there’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. And when you hear the word “investors,” you think about investment. And when you hear the word “investment,” you automatically assume that you put something in to get something out. I’m just not clear on what that something would be.

The American consortium plans to snap up enough shares to become the biggest single shareholder in the club and would be likely to demand seats in a new-look boardroom. The finer details behind the move are not yet clear, but the current configuration of major shareholders means that any deal will be complicated.

Par for the course. And when Jackson says the finer details are not yet clear, you’d better believe they’re not yet clear. That’s just one of the many, many, many obstacles in the way of this thing. He also says the deal will be complicated, and I’m very sure that’s the case. Because you’re not dealing with one group and asking them to sell—you’re dealing with multiple groups and trying to get each of them to play ball.

Former chairman Dave King owns almost 13 per cent, Douglas Park retains nearly 12 per cent, George Taylor holds just over 10 per cent, Stuart Gibson is not far behind, with John Bennett on around seven per cent. Directors Julian Wolhardt and John Halsted share a combined stake of just over 12 per cent.

The problem there, as should be blatantly obvious, is King. If this story has come from King and it’s him who wants to sell his 13 per cent, then the blockage is going to be people like Park, who don’t necessarily want to relinquish control. Certainly not if it means King walks away with his pockets full of gold.

In fact, this really shouldn’t be complicated. If months have gone into this, then these people should already know who’s willing to sell and whether or not they can get their hands on a sufficient number of shares to make this into something real.

And provided that this consortium actually does exist—provided that the talks are at an advanced stage—you would think all of those details would have been taken care of already. Because if there’s disagreement about this—if there are holdouts on the Ibrox board who don’t want these people in overall control—then between that and whoever makes up the consortium, there’s a lot of potential for tension.

While Marathe has not played a leading role in the takeover discussions, it’s understood he has agreed to help fund it as his group closes in on a deal to oversee a revolutionary transfer of power in the boardroom. In return, not only would Rangers receive a massive injection of transfer cash, but the club would also gain access to the 49ers’ cutting-edge, data-driven technology for player recruitment, as well as opening the door to a number of money-spinning sponsorships and new commercial tie-ups.

Hold on. Wait. What? So the guy who was supposed to be leading this… doesn’t have a major role in the takeover negotiations? So who exactly is conducting these negotiations? Because Jackson has spent the bulk of this piece telling us this guy is the one involved in them.

And now he’s going to partially fund this out of his own pocket? I thought it was the 49ers who were supposed to be funding it? And how can you even call it his group if he’s not even leading it? And how can they be closing in on a takeover when there are supposedly so many obstacles in the way—obstacles that Jackson himself acknowledges, including a complicated boardroom structure?

As for the data-driven technology, I’m sure it can be retooled, but right now, it’s designed to help find American football players. And if you’ve ever watched that sport, you’ll know there are one or two differences between it and this one.

People keep talking about data-driven signings as if this is some revolutionary concept. It isn’t. It’s been in vogue for about 15 years now. A lot of fancy claims are made about the transformational nature of it, but there’s no real evidence that it’s any better at unearthing the next Vinícius Júnior than good old-fashioned scouting.

And if you haven’t laughed up until now, get ready.

The would-be buyers view the club as a perfect investment opportunity given its regular access to UEFA elite competitions, either in the Champions League or Europa League. Marathe’s knowledge of the British game, coupled with his position with the cash-rich 49ers, is seen as hugely significant.

Let’s take this from the back and work our way forward.

This guy is seen as key to the deal—the deal in which he’s not actually playing a leading part. His position with the 49ers is seen as crucial, even though they’re not directly involved in this. His position with Leeds apparently gives him some deep knowledge of the British game.

Yeah… in the same way that your average Football Manager player has knowledge of the British game. In the same way that someone like Ross Wilson can go to England and identify decent players because a club with £80 million in TV money can afford them—but while he was in Scotland, he was scrounging around in the bargain bin looking for players the Ibrox club could afford.

It’s hard to see how knowing who Cole Palmer is translates into any kind of advantage for a club that couldn’t afford to buy his boots.

Now for the really fun part—the claim that the Ibrox club is a perfect investment opportunity because of their regular access to European competitions.

Oh, dear God.

That club has had regular access to European football for the past six or seven years now. And in every single one of those years, they made a loss. Every single one. Including the season they reached a European final. A loss every single time.

So it’s not exactly clear to me where this investment opportunity lies when you get as much money for winning one Champions League group game as you do for winning the Scottish Premiership title. When a draw in that tournament is worth more than a win in the Europa League. Which is where they’re going to be stuck.

The money the average SPFL club gets from Sky over a decade is less than what the club finishing bottom of the English Premier League gets in one year. Anyone looking at the Ibrox club as an investment vehicle is going to run a mile when they see that the numbers simply don’t add up.

If Jackson is trying to tell us that serious people with serious money believe the real cash in Scottish football comes from regularly playing in the Europa League, then either he’s nuts for believing that—or they are.

He recently headed up a gradual, staged takeover of Leeds United, bankrolled by the York family—owners of the 49ers and listed by Forbes as having a net worth of around $6 billion.

Bravo for him. But that’s their money, not his. And despite their name being in the headline, you can already see from this piece that they’re not involved in this—aside from the vague connection with his name.

The Yorks may own Leeds, but once again, it comes back to commercial revenue and the global market that opens up the moment you buy an English club, particularly one in the top flight. Say what you like about the Premier League—an overhyped, overblown mess of a league—but it has cachet. It has some social status attached to it, because of the kinds of people who own clubs down there.

But I repeat—this is the Scottish Premiership. There is no social cachet attached to owning one of our clubs.

Celtic is unique in that it has a massive Scottish and Irish global fanbase. The Ibrox club thinks it’s unique, but in reality, it’s just a knock-off version of what was once a provincial West of Scotland football club. That’s not my view—that’s what Hugh Adam, a former Rangers director, said.

San Francisco 49ers Enterprises—the investment wing of the NFL giants—first purchased a 15 per cent stake in the Elland Road outfit in 2018. Three years later, Marathe increased that stake to 44 per cent. In the summer of 2023, he completed a £170 million deal to buy the club outright.

Bravo again.

But again, that was something he did on their behalf. And I’m just not clear how that’s relevant here—especially since, based on this piece, he seems to be acting as an independent figure on the periphery of this deal, rather than at its centre. It certainly has nothing to do with the York family or the 49ers Enterprises.

Hollywood star Will Ferrell subsequently snapped up a minority holding and revealed afterward that he was convinced to get involved following discussions with Marathe. Leeds are currently closing in on a return to the top flight of English football, with Daniel Farke’s side sitting in pole position in the Championship and with Marathe in charge as chairman.

There’s a great episode of The Thick of It where the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship is launching a “Healthy Choices, Healthy Living” policy, and they ask Andy Murray to be the face of it.

That’s all set to be signed off on until Malcolm Tucker, the government’s communications director, gets a cheeky backhander from a journalist who says that when celebrities are being wheeled out, you know a government is dying on its arse.

At that point, Malcolm goes back to the department and tells them to ditch Murray at once because to attach his name to the scheme makes it looks desperate.

Will Ferrell has absolutely nothing to do with this story at all. He’s just another bit of stardust sprinkled on it.

They have also raked in more than £150m from recent player sales, including Archie Gray’s £42m move to Spurs and Glen Kamara’s £10m transfer to Rennes—which came just 12 months after the Finland international’s £5m move from Glasgow.

That only sounds impressive until you actually think about it.

An English Premier League club selling grossly overrated, overvalued players to other Premier League clubs? That’s not news, and it’s certainly not proof of financial genius at Leeds. If anything, it’s proof of financial proficiency at Spurs that they bought Archie Gray for £42m.

The Glen Kamara to Rennes story made me laugh because, given the Premier League’s profile, they sold him for the same price we got for a 30-year-old striker with injury issues from the Scottish Premiership. When you think about it in those terms, it doesn’t seem quite as ingenious as Jackson wants it to sound.

The Americans believe Marathe’s expertise can help transform the fortunes of the club at a time when it is being ravaged by internal unrest. Philippe Clement’s side hit rock bottom earlier this month when they were dumped out of the Scottish Cup by Championship minnows Queen’s Park, sparking a furious response in the stands.

Is it just me, or does that paragraph make him sound like just there to give this the appearance of pizzaz? A frontman for the Americans rather than a serious player in this deal?

And if he’s already running a major organisation, where do they think he’s finding the time in his schedule to come here and upend the Ibrox one—which needs more rebuilding than an LA fire disaster zone?

And a section of away supporters at Tynecastle on Sunday demanded change at the top of the club during a 3-1 league win over Hearts. The club have won just a single Premiership title since King swept to power a decade ago, and the Americans see similarities with the 49ers.

Yeah, because these sports geniuses haven’t been able to win a single damned thing with them in all the time they’ve been involved. That alone should give people clinging to this story some pause for thought.

The York family dynasty has run the San Francisco franchise since the turn of the century after winning control of the outfit following a legal battle with former owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. DeBartolo had enjoyed unprecedented success with the 49ers during the ’80s and ’90s—winning five Super Bowls.

So let me see if I’ve got this right.

These people bought out an owner who had amassed a slew of silverware, and since they bought him out, the organisation hasn’t won any silverware. And this paragraph is in a story that is supposed to make them sound like trustworthy, high-ambition custodians? I’m right about that, yeah?

He turned over ownership in 2000 to his sister—billionaire businesswoman Denise DeBartolo York—and her husband John York, a retired cancer research pathologist. The couple then handed over control of the 49ers to their son, Jed York, in 2008.

For an organisation they seem to be proud of, they sure seem to have done an awful lot of playing pass-the-parcel with it between each other.

And that’s how Jackson chooses to wrap up the article—not with some blinding revelation about when all this might take place, or anything like that, but with a weird, potted history of the York family, following on from a weird, potted history of the frontman and Will Ferrell.

If it seems as if the last half of the article doesn’t have a lot of detail in it, well, then it’s got a lot in common with the first half of the article, which doesn’t have a lot of detail in it either.

So what do we learn?

That mystery American investors want to buy the Ibrox club—if they can solve some of the problems. That the investors are interested in a takeover to make money because of the Ibrox club’s exposure to European football.

And yet, they supposedly plan to go about restoring the fortunes of the club by spending the kind of money that UEFA would either ban them from European competition for using, or withhold European revenues if they actually did it that way.

I know we’re going to be accused of looking at this through green-tinted specs.

I know we’re going to be accused of not wanting to see this succeed.

But you may as well accuse us of not wanting that big greenhouse of magic money trees they planted to see any growth. It’s like saying I don’t want the fairies at the bottom of the garden to take all their gold round to Ibrox and drop it off at the front door.

Because even if the billionaire York family and their frontmen are actually leading this consortium—even if they can get approval from enough shareholders to give them control of the boardroom and they can find a way around the SFA and UEFA regulations on multi-club ownership, which in the case of Hibs restricted their new “investors” to 29.9% —there is no money to be made at a skint Glasgow football club, brought to its knees by years of overspending.

It’s not really clear where the money is it at Hibs, but you’re talking about a high seven figures in “investment” and that could be recouped if they can uncover some gems in the transfer market and sell them on at a profit. At Ibrox you’re talking about tens of millions just to get in the door … and then the real leeching starts.

So what do they and their mysterious “consortium” want?

Where do the see the Ibrox profit centres? I’ll be writing about that later on.

The solution to Ibrox’s debt issues is not to overspend again, only using American money. And even if there were people willing to spend that money, UEFA’s financial sustainability regulations will not allow them to do it.

Yeah, it’s safe to say I see one or two problems with this. Not least of which is an obvious one. Well before this season ends, that club has to send out season ticket renewal forms. And if they’re going to sell any number of season tickets at all, there has to be something like hope on the horizon.

So the story itself might have come out of nowhere, but the central idea behind it—that those fans need something to put their cold, hard cash down on the table for—is not surprising in any way, shape, or form.

It’s not the only reason this smells like yesterday’s fish. But if I were an Ibrox fan, it’s reason enough not to go spending my hard-earned cash on it just yet.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

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