PLANET Fitba may look like planet Earth, it might rotate on its axis once every 24 hours, and take roughly 365 days to orbit the Sun, but, once you cross the space-time continuum between Earth and PF - you're in a whole new galaxy.
Why else would otherwise sane and sensible (not forgetting rich) business-men, used to making correct business decisions every day of their lives act as they do whenever they stop becoming businessmen and morph into football club directors or chairmen? Is it something they put in the water - maybe it's time we properly analysed the chemical content of liquid Bovril - just about the only drink you ever see at football matches, but nowhere else. Repeated blows to the head from an inflated spheroid, delivered at pace from someone else's boot might be a factor - except, we don't see too-many directors doing Joe Jordan impressions.
Craig Whyte's finances may or may not be what they were assumed to be, when he first emerged as a buyer for Rangers, but, if he does indeed have billions tucked away in some Monaco or Caymen Islands bank account - the belief is growing that they somehow got there through underhand means and are kept there by the simple fact that Mr Whyte doesn't appear to pay for things until a (figurative) gun is held to his head.
But is the Rangers' owner the only seemingly bad apple on PF? Not by a long chalk. Take the English Premiership - "The richest league in the world" - its 20 clubs are owned by some apparent wide boys, who make Del Boy Trotter look like the epitome of moral rectitude, fiscal probity and good business practice - indeed, they are such a bunch of wide boys, I am amazed that Trotter's Independent Trading Company isn't the league sponsor.
Any regulatory body worth its salt, (and what are the SPL and SFA if not regulatory bodies?), would have a degree of independence, protocols in place to properly assess any would-be club owner's fitness to control that club; meaningful statutes would be in place, with bonds and deposits required so that, in the event of a single club going under - the other members would not lose out.
Did anyone monitor Whyte's background, ability to properly fund Rangers or business past? Of course not.
I had thought, when I first heard of his interest: What does a venture capitalist want with Rangers? There didn't seem too-much there which he could cream-off and make money from (the traditional modus operandi of a VC).
Since nothing obvious there, maybe we should have taken him at face value - as many did: a Rangers fan, who had got rich and now wanted that rich man's plaything, a big club to call his own.
Perhaps we wanted, too-much, to see him strip back the over-inflated playing staff, get rid of the over-paid, under-performing players, put an end to Rangers' habit of paying over the odds for average Europeans and start bringing through good young Scottish players.
It hasn't happened - Rangers have carried-on over-spending, refusing to live within their means and with the lack of a clear vision and drive which has characterised the club since Celtic ended their run of nine-in-a-row.
Now, this Scottish institution is in the hands of an apparent spiv. Even the mainstream Scottish sporting media has woken-up to the fact that Rangers might be in freefall and beyond saving.
Now, apparently, thoughts are turning to seeing what might be saved and how the club can be kept in the SPL - Rangers being too big to fail.
Well, they are not and while I would hate to see Rangers joining Airdrie and Third Lanark in the ranks of the dead clubs, would it be all that bad a thing were they to join Queen's Park and Dumbarton in the lower reaches of the SFL? Perhaps reflecting on past glories, but, still able, under the right leadership and with the right mind set, to clamber back to the top - refreshed, invigorated and able to carry on to fresh glories.
Rangers have always welcomed the chase - let's hope, if the worse happens, they welcome doing the chasing.
Just a final thought - might not a race between "new" Rangers and "new" Hearts to see which club can be first to go from the SFL Third Division to the SPL kick new life into the sometimes moribund SFL?
No comments:
Post a Comment