Amidst all the hype around the imagined rivalry that will once again play out on Sunday, something more sinister is afoot.
I’m reminded of the unfortunate soul, who lost their job with a government PR agency for saying that the week after a major terrorist attack was “a good week to bury bad news”.
As insensitive as that statement was, it was true, as the Scottish media have proven this week.
Masters of Distraction
I’ve often said that the media in Scotland base their entire approach to football reporting around the construction of narratives. This is especially true when discussing Celtic or Rangers. The narrative this week is a combination of clichés, conflations and outright blind hope.
While the ever-loyal, true blue, people of Ibrox whip themselves up once again into a frenzy of delusion and false optimism, the press are quietly redirecting their coverage.
Talk around the “multi-million dollar takeover” has gone rather quiet. Instead, as I predicted, all the expected nonsense has been trotted out. Rangers legends forecasting a shock, pundits being bullish about how close the game will be, despite the total lack of statistical evidence to support this.
While this all-out assault of media spin ensues, it emerged this week that Rangers have taken out loans secured against future transfer revenues.
Where’s that time machine? I suddenly feel like I’m back in 2012 once again.
A Club in Distress, Yet the Arrogance Persists
Business that are assured of an incoming swift takeover, especially when it involves individuals with “off the radar wealth” don’t need to go to lenders of last resort for the football equivalent of a crisis loan.
Of course, the Scottish daily newspapers have given this barely a footnote. It has fallen to noted Celtic fan media sources, such as our friends at the Huddle Breakdown to shine a proper investigative light on all this.
Meanwhile, several numbers on my Derby Week Bingo card have already come up.
The one conspicuously absent so far is any further movement on this takeover. Indeed the only statements I have seen from the alleged investors so far is “no comment”.
Now, as learned folk far better educated in this field than me have already highlighted, that doesn’t mean a deal isn’t happening, but it doesn’t mean one is imminent either.
The Opposite of How a Takeover Should Play Out
When taken in tandem with yet another share issue this week at the stadium John Brown played for, to raise a further 5.3 million pounds to keep daily operations going, this doesn’t seem like a business being primed for a swift takeover. Indeed, such a move actually serves only to put another obstacle in front of any proposed takeover. In short, it makes the takeover of all already debt-laden set of “assets” even more costly.
That is, if indeed we are at the due diligence stage, something that no-one outside of the Rangers blogsphere, erm, I mean Scottish tabloid press, has actually confirmed yet.
Indeed, unless there is something we aren’t being told, which surely can’t be the case when people with the moral fortitude of The Sun and the Daily Mail are involved, these moves don’t make much sense.
Another One Pound Scenario?
If the takeover ever actually happens, then all this background maneuvering serves only to further devalue the return current shareholders will get. It would only make sense if the likes of Dave King et al just want to dump their liabilities at any cost.
Indeed, it was under very similar circumstances that Craig Whyte, that prince among men, acquired the original Rangers from David Murray.
He famously paid the sum of one pound to acquire the club, and all its debts. The current version of Rangers might not go quite so cheaply, but it will definitely be for a rock bottom price, if indeed any sale happens at all.
As Usual, Alternative Media Leads the Charge
When the original Rangers died in 2012, the first people to forecast their demise were the likes of Phil MacGiolabhain and the Rangers Tax Case Blog. However, the Ibrox faithful didn’t want to listen, because they knew that the sources weren’t “Rangers men”.
Once again, in the absence of traditional media doing their job of holding the powerful to account, it falls on the “internet bampots” to do their job for them. Will the Brown Brogue Brigade listen to us this time?
Probably not, but we can’t say we didn’t try to warn them.
An Acquisition, Not a Takeover
Ok, so this may sound like semantics, but there is a very subtle difference in terms here, particularly when it comes to media spin around this story.
The American businessmen being linked with Rangers, and again I reiterate that none of them have actually expressed any public interest in investment, aren’t doing this because they love the club, or even because of any particular interest in football. It’s about money, pure and simple.
In discussions around the proposed takeover, speaking to Alan Morrison of The Huddle Breakdown, English journalist Nick Harris, who unlike most of the other “journalists” covering this story, has no skin the game whether it goes through or not, was succinct in his assessment.
Harris said: “The one motivation for a Rangers takeover seems to be a potential flip.”
In simple terms, this means taking a business that isn’t doing well, getting it for next to nothing, returning it to profitability and then selling it for a substantial return on your initial investment. This typically takes 3 to 5 years.
If This Were Celtic, it Would Be a Lot Simpler
The main stumbling block to this though, is the obvious question that no one in the Scottish sycophancy corps wants to ask: Just how do you take an absolute basket case of a business like Rangers and make it profitable?
There’s two ways: start winning titles again and qualifying for the Champions League, or as we are currently seeing at the likes of Manchester United, make brutal, swinging cuts to get the business out of the red.
The Daily Record and company would have you believe that the new buyers will just cough up 40-50 million and magically Rangers will be “back where they belong”. For starters, that wouldn’t even bring Rangers level with Celtic, let alone allow them to move ahead.
And even if it did, financial fair play means that can’t happen, lest Rangers withdraw from UEFA competition. Competition which, as I said, is the only realistic avenue they have to return to profitability.
A Reality Check for Our Friends in Govan
The reality is Celtic are bigger than Rangers. We have a bigger stadium, a far, far larger international fanbase, and superior marketability. This is due ironically enough, to Celtic having the one thing Rangers never will, no matter how hard their media backers try to create it: a compelling narrative.
As one banner famously put it, Celtic have gone “From Immigration to Domination”. Our ascendance from a charity set up to feed the poor, Irish immigrants of 19th century Glasgow, to winning the ultimate prize in European football is the stuff of fairy tales.
That’s why, in addition to our own global fanbase, there are plenty of people out there who love a sporting Cinderella story. For many of them, Celtic are probably their second team, or at least a team they keep an eye on. Such people could probably become Celtic fans, if we marketed ourselves a bit better.
Rangers don’t have that. Their arrogance, inability to live within their means and the frequent fascism from some of their fanbase also ensures they never will.
I look forward to seeing Celtic remind them of their true place in the natural order this weekend.