I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on, and I still love to read to this day. But I’m also a child of the TV and movie generation, and I’ve seen more films and watched more TV shows than one person should ever realistically be able to cram into his brain. I love movies. So much.
And I owe a lot of that to two guys in particular—Paul Blair and Michael Brock, who were the two crazy film students from Edinburgh I shared a flat with in Stirling while I was at university there.
One of the films they made me sit down and watch was Roger Avary’s first movie, Killing Zoe, which takes place in Paris and starred Eric Stoltz as Zed, a professional safe cracker who goes over there to do a job with his friend Eric, a guy he’s known since they met on some kind of graduate exchange programme years earlier.
Eric is played by the veteran French actor, writer and director Jean-Hugues Anglade.
In a career full of very interesting roles, he has never been better—or more unhinged. We see the various facets of his personality the moment we meet him, as he swirls into Zed’s hotel room like a hurricane, kicking out the hooker he’s spent the night with in the most obnoxious fashion before instantly transforming into a cheerful mate who hasn’t seen his buddy in years. They go on a whirlwind tour of the seedier side of Paris.
Naturally, Zed wants to know about the job. They’re robbing a bank. On Bastille Day.
Zed asks Eric when Bastille Day is and is told that it’s tomorrow.
These guys are drunk out of their minds, drugged to the eyeballs, and robbing a bank the next day. Zed is momentarily horrified, because he doesn’t know what part of the plan he’s playing or anything like that—only to be told that before they do a job, they “live life.”
But not to worry, because everything is already worked out anyway.
I don’t think I’m spoiling much to tell you that nothing has been worked out.
Their plan—such as it is—is a slapstick farce. The gang members are coked-up lunatics who simply walk into the place in broad daylight and turn it into a bloodbath within minutes. They fail to prevent the triggering of the alarm, and so a botched robbery becomes a botched siege instead, with terrified customers now hostages of this increasingly unhinged group of lunatics who have no idea what they’re doing at all.
It reminds me of that moment in Apocalypse Now when Willard and Kurtz are finally having their showdown, and Kurtz asks why the Americans want to terminate his command. Willard replies, “Because your methods have become unsound.” And when Kurtz asks if his methods have become unsound, Willard utters the immortal words, “I don’t see… I don’t see any method at all.”
That’s the so-called Souness Plan that the Daily Record was trumpeting again last night.
The “plan” to rescue the Ibrox club from a fate worse than death—being second place to Celtic in perpetuity.
That’s what the plan amounts to: the bank robbery in Killing Zoe. Something cobbled together on the hoof. Something that cannot possibly work, for all the reasons we’ve laid out a million times. Something so simplistic it would be laughed out of any first-grade classroom. It’s not even close to a workable scheme.
It’s not just that the method is unsound. There is no method at all.
The central concept—“spend more money until the problem is fixed”—has been tried and tried and tried throughout recorded history.
It’s the idea you throw out there when you’ve run out of ideas.
Just spend £50 million on three or four players; that’s his grand scheme.
Why do they keep promoting this as a plan?
It’s not a plan. It’s a clownish, idiotic, senseless, worthless remark thrown out there by an idiot. There’s nothing to credit here at all. To call this a plan is like saying the bank robbers in Killing Zoe had a plan. They didn’t. They walked in and drew their guns—that was the extent of the thought that went into it.
And frankly, that’s more thought than Souness gave this.
And the thing is, you can tell—by the way the Record covers this whole takeover saga—that this is their idea of a plan.
Someone just throw money at it and hope it solves everything. It doesn’t matter that the money has to come from somewhere, from someone.
They just assume there are people out there with open wallets desperate to give their money to that club. It doesn’t matter that it would violate all sorts of UEFA financial sustainability rules and they wouldn’t be allowed to do it. Little things like the rulebook don’t get in the way of a mad idea.
One of their desperate hacks even referred to it not long ago as a blueprint.
Have they ever actually looked at what a blueprint is? The freaks literally don’t know what the word means. A blueprint is either a technical drawing or an engineering plan. These are two of the most complex and fully fleshed-out things you will ever see. A blueprint is a complete diagram of how something fits together, showing what every part is for and how it functions.
The Record report last night called it a masterplan. And the reason they’re resurrecting it now is that Souness has brought out what they’re calling a “blockbuster case study,” which is a collection of nonsensical anecdotes about how clubs that spend money tend to be more successful than those that don’t.
This staggering, game-changing revelation was, apparently, unknown to anyone in football until Souness mentioned it. This incredible insight will revolutionise the way we think about the game. Except… no, it won’t. Of course it won’t.
This shit doesn’t even rise to the level of “stating the obvious.”
I mean, they quoted extensively from the Souness interview which he gave at the time, and it was so contradictory and all over the place that it could’ve been part of a Trump press conference. He started by saying the gap between the two clubs isn’t that big, then moved on to claiming it would take a £50 million spend to close it.
That’s how completely nuts this whole thing was.
Yet over and over again, the Daily Record has tried to present this as a plan.
A plan to fix a problem which, according to Souness, doesn’t even exist.
A plan that consists of simply spending money without the slightest thought as to where it comes from or what rules it might break.
The whole thing is deranged.
I cannot express enough contempt for the kind of people who publish this stuff. Mark Pirie’s name is on this one. These people are clowns, and I am sick and tired of covering their circus. I wish we had a better media than this.
Spending big was what killed their old club, money brings success eh, so according to everyone back in 2012 there was no clear advantage fielding better players that they could not afford if they stuck to the rules, the so called Nimmo Smith commission said so as well, nothing to see here, move on, no title stripping blah blah blah. That whole organisation is a joke, we all paid for tge disaster then through taxes, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Murray metals, the liquidation of the old rangers. It just proves how deep the establishment goes, even Alex Salmond stated that losing the huns is a bad day for football and Scotland, legit of a man, what about breaking the law and not paying taxes, now we have demotion and all the other shit. Auld f##m is the phrase that let’s people think there is a continuation, utter bullshit, they even say it for the womens games ffs. Rant over Hail Hail
Souness is a bum ah fuck. Why would anyone take the ‘men against bhoys’ blustererer seriously in any way. He proved in those days that his words were fake and meaningless, yet out journos still give him fawning respect, it’s totally vomit inducing.
our
Forget about sevco they are a irrelevance. Let’s upgrade for next season get kvb now city don’t want him get him in the hoops give him the contract he wants imagine arne and Kevin in the same midfield .
James, I am blind in one eye for the time being and I am awaiting an operation to get it sorted. The remaining one is not great either, so FFS can you not please introduce an edit button to make life on here a wee bit more manageable, I’m sure everyone will be in agreement with that.
Sounness has been detached from reality for quite some time. In his world, because there are no sides between them in 2nd and us in 1st, the gap must be quite narrow. £50M (& the rest) wide suggests that the gap is not so narrow. Forget the FSR difficulties of spending that £50M, even if it was available, sevco lack the infra structure to quickly and sustainably challenge us. The smaller ground, the smaller sponsorship deals, the boardroom debts and the lack of Champions League cash all add up to a smaller turnover, which of course leads to restrictions on spending, which in turn makes it harder to recruit the necessary quality. Turning that around will take time. The bears will have to be patient. A quality rarely seen in the staunchest of bears.
Sourness is a hollowed out shell of a man. He has done this to himself in his bitterness and bile against Celtic, who humiliated him all those years ago, and from which he has never recovered.
A nasty liberty taker whose punishment is ongoing.