“Shots fired from the clown-car.” The CelticBlog responds to Graham Spiers and others.

Way back several months ago, as I was trying to get to the bottom of the abiding mystery of why a group of American investors would want to take over a football club based in Scotland, I spoke to someone with some knowledge of US-backed takeovers.

They told me that much of the direction of travel would hinge not on whether they could obtain a majority shareholding, but on whether they could get to 75%.

That conversation was the genesis of several articles I wrote on the subject.

I was told that 75% was a necessary threshold if a club was to be completely subordinated to the needs of its investor class. I was told that significant investment could be ruled out until they got there. I was also told that, in order to extract the maximum profit, they would require that level of absolute control.

What puzzled me was how this group of shareholders could get to that magic number when so many sections of the Ibrox shareholding class—i.e. the previous board of directors and the fans —still stood against them, or might have been willing to oppose their grab for control.

Now, I don’t know what deals have been cut behind the scenes, but I do know, as I wrote at length last night, the mechanism by which they intend to get to that threshold. A controlling interest, which will make any future opposition irrelevant.

There were a question I had to ask in the aftermath of finding out that they were aiming to do this share issue, and it was this: if these people were intent on a wholesale power grab, what would tip us off that it was in the offing? What should we be looking for amidst the swirling sands?

And I was told to be on the lookout for two specific things: changes in the way shares were allocated and weighted, and changes to the Articles of Association.

That, I was told, was the big one. Because if the Articles underwent significant enough change, that would be the red flag worth paying attention to.

I didn’t stumble across the point of last night’s article by accident.

I was told explicitly to look for that element in the deal. So, when the Ibrox club announced its EGM and its share issue, and announced that it was going to delist from the stock exchange and become a private company, I knew there would be changes to the Articles of Association and I knew that I needed to read them.

Their circular to shareholders, calling the EGM, confirmed that suspicion—and that’s why I went digging around for what those new Articles were. Because I knew that’s where the mystery would be solved.

I like to solve puzzles. I play a lot of strategy games in my spare time. I’m always trying to find solutions to problems. And right from the start, this takeover presented us with a puzzle.

What the hell do a bunch of California investors want with a Scottish football club that has never posted a profit? How do they intend to get their money out if they put significant sums in? These are not complicated questions.

They seem to me to be fairly fundamental ones. It seems to me that these are the sorts of question that anyone sensible and sane should automatically be asking.

I’ve spent the better part of the last ten years endlessly fascinated by our sporting media’s lack of common sense, lack of critical faculties, and its willingness to accept the most simplistic suggestions and answers to complex questions.

At no point in these proceedings have any of our mainstream media journalists pulled apart any aspect of this deal. They’ve done zero due diligence.

As per usual, that’s been left to us. We have asked the questions.

We have sought the answer to the puzzle.

And we’ve been accused, in doing so, of having an obsession with our rivals. I’m going to cover that a little later in this piece because it comes to bear over and over again. But the truth is that, for some of us, we just want an answer to the puzzle. We can’t understand the logic of this.

It’s got nothing to do with the club involved in it. I don’t understand the logic of American investment in Aberdeen or at Hearts or at Hibs either. I don’t know how any of the people involved in it believe they’re going to get their money out.

But in terms of those clubs, we’re not talking about huge sums of money. And in the case of the Ibrox club, we might well be talking about significant quantities of cash.

In some ways, investments in Hearts and Hibs and Aberdeen from American sources—and interest from American sources in other Scottish clubs—does make more sense than an investment in the club at Ibrox.

You could do genuinely transformative things at those clubs for relatively small sums. And if Aberdeen can find and sell a couple of Bojan Miovski types for the kind of money he went for, then getting a return isn’t as difficult as it would be at a much bigger institution with a much bigger operational footprint.

You can lose millions investing in any Scottish club. At only two Scottish clubs could you conceivably lose tens of millions—or even a nine-figure sum—given enough time and the continued, sustained throwing of good money after bad.

As I’ve said repeatedly, I would find this deal equally hard to comprehend if it was Celtic they were interested in.

There would be serious questions I would want answers to if this was my own club. And there are guarantees that I would want written in blood before I would ever want our shareholders to sanction any kind of transfer of ownership to the people involved in it.

I would want to know what the profit motive was.

I would want to know how those profits were going to be realised.

I would want to know how much money would annually be taken out of the club.

I would want to know if the deal meant the club having to take on significant debt.

I would want to know how the whole thing was being financed, and whether or not that was something we had to worry about.

The idea that there would be faceless investors as part of some majority shareholder group, which would wield absolute power—as I outlined last night—I would not want those people near Celtic Park, let alone running the operation from it.

And I would be looking for red flags from the day the deal was first floated in the media. I’d be looking for the red flags prior to it being signed, because it’s too late to start finding and waving them after the deal is done.

As we’ve seen in numerous articles, many of these people are still unknown. If the 23 June meeting goes as they plan it to, they will remain unknown.

Their names might never be disclosed to the supporters, and so their intentions can never be known or understood.

The extent of their control can never be known or understood. And so ultimately, the people who control the destiny of the club in every respect will remain elusive in the background—and their intentions a mystery to supporters and shareholders alike.

In all the time since this deal was floated in the media, these people have never given a single interview. They have never outlined a single one of their plans. They have never spoken on the record about what their intentions are, or how they intend to achieve their goals.

At every turn they have relied on one thing; and it has been duly delivered to them over and over again. A media which will look at the big hole where questions should be and instead of asking them will supply their own answers.

Everything that these people are allegedly going to do has been invented and promoted by the media. Invented and promoted by the media.

Look at the facts here. In the absence of real information the media has created its own reality. The investor group has not needed to outline a strategy; the media has dreamed one up for them, and promoted it as if it was there in black and white. Throughout it all, they have had the balls to accuse us of seeing what we want to see.

Are these people joking, or what?

When Fergus McCann wanted to take over Celtic, he outlined his plan in its totality before he asked for a penny of our money. He told us what it would all be spent on. He even gave us a timeframe for how long he would stay in control—five years—and at the end of it, he said he would sell his shares back to the fans.

It was consistent. It was transparent. It was laid out there for everyone to see. Every element of the plan was known in advance. Every step he intended to take was laid out in front of him—and then laid out in front of us.

Let me say it again: not a single detail of what these people intend to do—far less how they intend to do it—has ever been made public, yet we have a media that proclaims its complete confidence in them and their aims.

Yet they don’t know who all of these people are. They don’t have the first clue what objectives they have set. They don’t know the timeline. They have no clear idea of what success looks like or how these people will define it. But they believe, utterly, that this will be a success. And we’re the ones living in a fantasy?

We’re accused of looking for holes. We’re accused of being motivated by … bitterness? Envy? Fear? Obsession? They say we need to differentiate between what we want to happen and what we think will happen.

All we’ve done is point out that there are holes in this.

The media stood and watched as a previous Ibrox club died and went out of business. Their own fans stood and watched as it went out of business. They turned on everyone and anyone who tried to warn them what was going to happen. When the BBC exposed Craig Whyte as a fraud—long after we already had—their supporters picketed the BBC.

What we’re watching here, with slack-jawed amazement, is the same.

The same media. The same fans.

Getting in line to hand over the club again, to people they do not know, whose motives they do not understand. On the basis of simple-minded suppositions about how these people—who’ve barely set foot on the shores of this land—have suddenly found it in their hearts to act altruistically on behalf of a down-on-its-luck Scottish football club.

And yeah, I find it extraordinary. I find it incredible.

And in case it’s not obvious, let me say it out loud.

If these people were up front about what they wanted to do—if they did present a coherent plan to fans and media alike, if they did go on the record and talk about what their intentions are and what they’re going to do to get there—then there’d be nowhere for this story to go. If these people were Fergus McCann types, who valued openness and transparency, and were willing to discuss what it is they’re trying to do, then I’d have nothing to write about.

Except to challenge my own club to rise to the moment.

But they haven’t done any of that. And they don’t intend to.

Yet this week, several members of the commentariat have openly sneered at us for doing the job they don’t want to do.

I don’t care what they think our motivations are. That doesn’t mean I will allow us to be attacked without putting forth an aggressive response.

The latest of them was Graham Spiers, who penned an article on his Patreon which opened by mocking the Celtic sites and then repeated every daft assertion that his colleagues in the media have been making since this began.

When a number of us responded, he chose to interpret some of it as personal attacks and to interpret other aspects of it as “obsession.” He released a 14 minute monologue last night in which he sought to try and minimise our work and question our motives.

I am going to respond to that monologue now.

In many ways, I already have in the course of this article and in the piece I posted last night. But it deserves more. It deserves the Jackson treatment, and that’s what I’m going to subject it to. But not all of it. It’s a lot. I’ll focus on the important parts, those relevant to what we’re trying to do here on this site and others. I won’t take any of it or use any of it out of context; I can’t, since it’s publicly available for anyone to listen to.

Let’s start where he does; at the beginning.

“There is something about the Ibrox club, about the Ibrox club’s politics, which triggers very strong emotions, especially among some Celtic fans.”

And not without good reason.

The “Ibrox club’s politics” toxify our national sport by ignoring bigotry in its stands. Ibrox regimes have operated sectarian signing policies, they have cheated the sport by using tax avoidance techniques, they have played the victim card instead of taking responsibility for their own actions and on and on and on.

The events of 2012 endangered the whole of the sport. Their boardroom has been the dwelling place of con men, fraudsters and even convicted criminals. We would be very stupid indeed if we were not keeping a close eye on what’s happening over there.

“So this takeover of the club from Ibrox by the investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers… you know what? It might work. It might work. It requires money. It requires due diligence. It requires a track record on the part of the investors. It requires men of business integrity saying and doing what they mean, and it might work. I happen to think it will work — that this move will be good for the Ibrox club.”

It might work. Spiers is right about that. But when he says he “thinks” it will work he is actually doing exactly what he will very shortly accuse of us of. He is not basing this belief on a shred of evidence … although he mistakenly believes that he is.

“But of course, I might be wrong. I’m not praying that it works. I’m not beseeching that it works. I’m not craving that it works. I just think it will work. What is the mystery here? Men come along from a sports franchise that has a very good pedigree and a very good track record and they want to invest in the club from Ibrox. They have money. They want to restore the Glasgow football club, but they want to do it without screaming promises. They want to do it without in any way promising the Ibrox fans the Earth.”

Let’s take that in two parts, because there are two separate strands to what he’s just said and both are equally important and require examination.

First, let’s take the “men from the sports franchise.”

He’s referring to 49er Enterprises; I covered this last night in the article about the Articles of Association. If this was them and solely them they could do this without the aid of a “consortium.”

They are involved; that much is clear.

But they are not in the forefront of this.

That’s Andrew Cavanagh, as numerous of Spiers colleagues have confirmed. He has no involvement in sports on which to base any belief that he will be successful. He may lean on his consortium partners for expertise, but the makeup of the board is stacked in his favour, not theirs, his and his silent partners.

The second element is this part about them not “screaming promises”; I wholeheartedly agree. They have done no such thing. They have said precisely nothing about what their plans are, as I pointed out earlier in the piece.

So Spiers freely admits that they have not disclosed what it is that they want to do. He doesn’t acknowledge not knowing precisely who they are; this is a mistake he will repeat throughout this monologue with the constant references to the 49ers.

The deeper issue is one he acknowledges. He has no idea what they plan to do. But he talks about his confidence that it will succeed. I find that astonishing.

“They want to be disciplined with their money. They actually want to be, if anything, prudent and even ever so slightly tight-fisted with their capital. They want there to be no fiscal waste. What is the issue? Why are non-Ibrox fans in such a frenzy over it? Why is it that if you think this takeover might work, you are suddenly a sycophant or cheerleading for the Ibrox club or prostrating yourself before the club from Ibrox?”

I’m not accusing him of being a sycophant. I’m accusing him of basing his entire belief in this on the reputations of people he doesn’t know and whose plan is yet to be revealed. I agree that they will, in all probability, be tight with their money; that’s a far cry from the widespread belief in transformative signings and transfer war chests which is running rampant in much of the media and elsewhere.

But you know what? He doesn’t know that for a fact and neither do I, because these people have not made any public statement about what their plans actually are. All of this is people jumping to conclusions. In short, I’m saying that without a shred of due diligence he sounds like a mark, someone buying the Kingston Bridge for a fiver.

“I think this takeover will be good for the Ibrox club — something as dull as that. Why is it such an outrageous thing to suggest? My take on the 49ers — and this is even more dull — is based on some hours of conversations I’ve had about this takeover, about the men involved, such as Andrew Cavanagh, about what they’ve done at Leeds, about what they’ve achieved in Belgian football. There’s a legal aspect to this deal — there always is — and the 49ers have gone about this in a very transparent and almost fastidious way.”

First, let me say again; the 49ers are involved in this process but are not running it. If they were there would be no reason to involve Andrew Cavanagh and have him play the leading role in this.

He has no record on which to express that confidence. He has played no role at Leeds or anywhere else, so anyone Spiers has spoken to who has talked up his bona fides as if this was so is basically either lying or has no idea what they are talking about.

If you’re not looking at this with Cavanagh front and centre, rather than the 49ers, you simply aren’t paying attention.

Also, the people involved should get no special credit for being “transparent and fastidious” in their dealings so far; they are legally obliged to be.

They have followed basic procedures and the letter of the law. Why do they deserve credit for that? Because they aren’t Dave King types? I never thought they were. But as I have revealed, their proposed Articles of Association will actually eliminate transparency almost entirely; they have to get them passed first, but I think that’s a formality.

“There is a certain type of Celtic fan — you know the guy — who cannot stop thinking and talking about the Ibrox club. And it’s pretty weird. It’s a bit old. And moreover, for this type of Celtic fan poring over everything at the second Ibrox club, you simply are not allowed to hold any view whatsoever that might look favourably upon this 49ers takeover. Not allowed. You’re out of bounds. Unacceptable. Saying anything positive about this deal is a dud. It’s a fake-over. It’s a con. They’re pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.”

Absolute rubbish, all of it, from start to finish.

There are 12,000 plus articles on this site, which I have written in a ten year period, and less than 10% of them are about the club across the city.

But I make no apology even for that 10%.

They are a source of amusement to me because they are always falling over their own feet. But I have written far more about the media and their dire standards, and the attitudes of the governing bodies and their refusal to govern.

I repeat again what I said earlier though; if we were not paying attention to what happens over there, then we’d be doing our own club a disservice since, as is apparent when you study them, that they are, in fact, absolutely consumed by thoughts of Celtic; of copying us, of catching us, of supplanting us.

And traditionally, they have not been terribly worried about following rules and regulations, or even the laws of the land, in attempting to do those things. I care about what happens over there because it affects my club, it’s just as simple as that.

As to this idea that you are “not allowed” to look favourably on the deal; that’s based on a false premise if ever any argument was. It’s not the job of a journalist to “look favourably” at something like this. The job involves looking objectively at it, and the problem many of us have is that nobody in the media is doing that.

If this has merits point them out. Tell me what you are basing that view on. If you can’t point to a single public utterance, a single confirmed fact then what are you basing this “favourable” view on, exactly? You are cheerleaders for something you don’t even fully understand, and I think that’s pretty ridiculous. At least recognise the limits of your own argument instead of resorting to personal digs.

“I’ve found this strange syndrome on a number of occasions over the years — opposition fans who simply cannot distinguish what they definitely don’t want to happen from what might actually happen; between what they dread happening and what actually looks like happening. It’s one thing to detest this Ibrox takeover, to pray for it to fail, to beg, to beseech that it will flounder…”

Oh dear God. If this guy knows me at all – and I’ve been on his show and so he should know me pretty well – he knows that I put a lot of thought into what I write and I can definitely distinguish between what might happen and what I want to happen.

I wanted there never to be a club called Rangers anywhere playing in Scotland ever again in 2012; I knew there would be. I also knew that, stripped of sugar daddy money and unlimited funds from the bank that it would be impoverished, weak and broken.

In the end I prefer what we have to what I once thought I wanted. But I’ve always been able to separate the two and I always will be, and especially in my work.

As to detesting it and wanting it to fail; where have I ever said any of that? Where has any of us ever said any of that? I’ll tell you what I know to be true – and Spiers knows it himself, and he will very shortly demonstrate that – these people are limited in how much they can spend and by what changes they can make.

UEFA regulations will bind them tightly, so even if they were sugar-daddy types driven by ego my concerns would be minimal because they cannot simply act out of ego because of regulatory constraints.

But more importantly, I don’t believe that they are driven by ego. I think they are exactly what it says on the tin; American investors looking for a profit.

And why should we fear that in any way, shape or form?

The Ibrox club bleeds money. The only way to stop them from continuing to run up debts is to get the cost base under control. That means spending less on certain areas of the club, and since it all ties in together that means a weaker version of the club than it is right now, and it is likely to remain that way until these people can retool it to be something more.

Why in God’s name would I not want that process to get underway as soon as possible? Because I know something else; the Ibrox support will not allow these people time or the breathing space they need unless they see instant results, and I don’t believe that a structurally weaker club which spends less than it does now is going to be capable of that.

The club at Ibrox will not get stronger.

It will continue to go through cyclical crises, because its fans have no patience for a long-term plan and neither does the media that covers them.

Look at the response Patrick Stewart got after his first press conference because he literally told them the hard facts.

Even if these people turn out to be serious professionals with a serious plan, they will likely make cuts before they spend more because it makes no sense for a club which already runs up debts to add to the cost base by upping the spending. Which means a weaker, not stronger, Ibrox side for the foreseeable future. What’s not to like?

This, in fact, is one of the things we’ve been saying from the start; that’s conveniently ignored by those who claim we’ve been “desperate for this to fail.”

For literally years now I’ve pondered what an Ibrox club shorn of the financial doping, forced to spend only what it actually earns, looks like … and it doesn’t keep me awake at night. In fact, it sends me to bed all warm, happy and feeling good.

“That’s all well and good. But don’t make it the starting point of your evidence gathering. Make it the finishing point. Start with an open mind about this deal — not with a preordained conclusion — and then just see where it goes.”

I could very easily say the same to everyone in the mainstream media who has spent the time since the story first broke chasing rainbows and substituting what they would think will happen for what they want to happen.

You want to talk about people starting out with a pre-ordained conclusion?

Our doubts are based on not knowing who most of the investors are or how they hope to make money. What is their confidence based on?

“So, I trundled out a column on here, laying out my views — my slightly dull views — on how this 49ers deal might be good for the second Ibrox club. Goodness me, was this a blasphemy? Was this a dreadful thing to say? No one — no one — in Scottish journalism has been more cynical or critical of the Ibrox club over the years than me. And yet apparently that’s not true. I’m suddenly grovelling to them. I’m blind to what’s going on. I’m not looking properly. This deal must fail. It has to fail. It’s got to fail. It can’t work.”

No, you started your article by saying what dickheads fan media were for daring to ask the questions you and your colleagues didn’t want to ask.

If you’d simply laid out your views I might have mocked them for being based on figments of your imagination rather than hard facts; I would not have reacted as aggressively to what was intended to be insulting.

Nobody said either that you were “grovelling” to anybody; what some of us said was that you had fallen into a familiar trap where you were leaping to conclusions without a shred of evidence to back them up.

And like I said, nobody is saying this “can’t work.”

If It’s a profit driven enterprise I would love to see it work. I would love to see the Ibrox club limited to spending only what it earns. If they can find a way to grow a magic money tree then great; Celtic should benefit from that knowledge. If it opens up new commercial avenues for them then those are equally accessible to us. That means we’ll grow as they do, and since we start out stronger why would I want it to fail?

“I’ve examined this. This looks like grounds for optimism. Don’t get in a lather when someone holds a view that you really, really can’t stand thinking about. I actually think, from Celtic’s point of view, that this 49ers takeover of the club from Ibrox — well, good for them — is unintimidating. I can’t see how it should intimidate Celtic in the slightest.”

You’ve examined it? No, buddy, I’ve examined it, and I’ve been called obsessed for having done so. Don’t tell me that you’ve put in the hard yards, you who is basing your faith in this on the work Andrew Cavanagh has done at Leeds, when he’s not involved in any way, shape or form at Leeds, when you didn’t read the new Articles of Association, when you’ve done absolutely no due diligence at all except to talk to some people who are talking up what the 49ers have done at Leeds.

I’m willing to bet you haven’t even studied, in any detail, what they’ve done at Leeds.

Do you know, for example, that they took control of Leeds in a leveraged buyout?

Do you know that Celtic spent more money in the summer to win the SPFL than they did in trying to get to the EPL?

You will doubtless say this proves how smart they are; I would say it proves that they weren’t willing to push out the boat for that glittering prize further than Celtic was in trying to get to the Knockout Phase of the Champions League.

Do you realise that Leeds fans credit many of the positive changes to the tie-in with Red Bull?

Do you know that their fans are very concerned about the implications of this deal and don’t know why their chairman is splitting his focus between two different clubs when they would prefer that he focussed solely on theirs?

I know all of that because I have actually looked at what they’ve done at Leeds and continue to do. Because I’ve spoken to Leeds fans, including bloggers. Because from the start I wanted to know what their bona fides were and I looked into them closely.

I also know that this track record of theirs is actually a mirage; the “three Superbowls in ten years” boast is hollow because they didn’t win one of them, where once they were serial winners of Superbowls, and so what the media is promoting, and hopes that we will miss, is the 49ers record, under the current owners, of winning second prize. Granted; that does somewhat equip them for some level of involvement at Ibrox.

“The Parkhead club is streets ahead of the Ibrox club in terms of finance — I mean tens of millions of pounds ahead — and Celtic already have a top-class manager in place who knows the scene, knows Scottish football, knows the European challenge that awaits Celtic. And Celtic fans should actually relish this challenge.”

Right from the start, I’ve also said that I hope that if it does nothing else it acts a wake-up call to our own board, because although I don’t expect a radical transformation our club needs to act as though it were certain; Noah built the Ark before the rain, after all, because you should only hope for the best after you’ve prepared for the worst.

I want Celtic on a war footing, even if the challenge never comes. I want us to be all we can be, and if this is what it takes to get us there, I have no concerns at all because if we’re at our best there’s nothing, within the current parameters, that they can do to change the landscape of the game here in any fundamental way.

That’s a far cry from someone who is allegedly “desperate” to see this fail and consumed by fears or even grief stricken at the prospect that these people have some sort of grasp on what they are doing.

“It’s been quite interesting to me, actually, how the 49ers have been lacking hysteria in their approach to taking on the Ibrox club. For example, in a legal release, they have suggested they will place an immediate £20 million — most of it to go into the football operation, i.e. on new players, on the team.”

You say “lacking hysteria”; I say unwilling to articulate a clear strategy.

They are perfectly happy to provide a blank sheet of paper and have the media write whatever version of reality suits them on it.

As you’ve done here in asserting that “most” of the £20 million will “go to the football operation.” They’ve said no such thing, but they aren’t going to correct those in the media who are happy to put that spin on it, because the £20 million “investment” carrot is crucial to their getting shareholder approval for their coup, as I pointed out at some length last night.

“£20 million is not exactly a war chest, is it? Where does £20 million get you these days? Celtic will spend at least that over the summer, I’d imagine. And I’d argue this was, if anything, a slightly modest pledge by the 49ers in their early days in charge of the Ibrox club. £20 million — I can think of far more exaggerated promises than that to make to the club and to fans in these opening weeks.”

If they had actually made it I might agree.

Not only did the 49ers not make such a pledge, but the actual shadowy investors who along with Andrew Cavanagh actually run this didn’t make such a promise either.

But I agree, in principle; it’s a modest sum, and if this was a 49ers takeover it should come as no surprise; from a £150 million transfer income at Leeds last season they spent just over £30 million. That, as I’ve said, is £10 million less than Celtic did.

These people are not daft enough to chuck money at signings and wages when their aim is to make, not spend, money. I suspect that this is one area where they and the Cavanagh consortium are precisely aligned. They all want to make profits, and in that regard I suspect they’ll find a way … whether that benefits the club remains to be seen.

The irony of this whole article, of course, is that I have the deepest respect for Graham Spiers and his journalism; he’s one of the few who has been a consistent critic of the Ibrox operations. But on this one his judgement is as faulty as you’ll find at The Daily Record and elsewhere; he’s been distracted by a lot of hot air and has missed the fact that all this has the substance of wind.

If he’d left it at simple bad judgement that would be his own lookout; he took a shot at us for a lack of objectivity, and in doing so only drew attention to his own, not to mention opened himself up for some return fire.

He’s not alone in this; the whole of the Scottish sporting press has merrily gone along for the ride. But that’s neither an excuse nor an exoneration, and it was never going to make me less inclined to shoot back. As a much tougher guy than I am said, in another context entirely, “it’s all in the game.”