Sarajevo and Sevco

The extent of the horror that is being broadcast from Gaza is undeniable.

What isn’t clear is whether or not the Hamas atrocities of October 7^th that precipitated this illegal collective punishment of innocent civilians constitute a Princip moment for this century.

I was a school student during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and my history teacher said that the unfolding crisis was similar to that in the Balkans in 1914.

Half a century later, the Middle East remains a geo-political tinderbox complete with the build-up of naval forces by a great power that is invested in supporting one side in a regional conflict.

Currently, there are just the TWO US carrier battle groups in the eastern Mediterranean at the moment.

With that bleak outlook, I struggle with the appropriateness of writing about a ridiculous football club that pretends to be one that died in 2012.

Since I last dipped into Planet Sevco, they have found a permanent replacement for Mickey B.

Of course, permanent at Ibrox is a somewhat shaky term these days.

Last night, a well-placed source reached out and had the skinny on the Blue Room manoeuvres regarding finding the FNG at Ibrox.

Firstly, though, I’m sure Mickey B WILL get his money, something about a 30-day deadline.

I was assured that in their hunt for the new supremo, there WAS a split in the Sevco High Command.

My information is that, in order to test the temperature of the Ibrox klanbase, a story was leaked to an obedient stenographer (there are many of them, dear readers) about the importance of not ignoring the home front.

This was code for Derek McInnes.

It is my settled view that the Transcendental Chairman would have preferred the Kilmarnock manager.

First off, he would have been the cheapest of the available candidates.

He knows the league at a granular level and has proven that he can work well on a budget.

He would, of course, also tick the Unsurpassed Dignity box.

However, the pushback from fan influencers was that appointing the Killie boss would mean accepting being Simply The Second Best.

That doesn’t sit well with delusions of supremacy.

Next up was Kevin Muscat; some in the Blue Room saw him as the Ange 2.0 candidate.

A few of the brethren thought that the Englishman in Japan could source the next Kyogo or Hatate for relatively small transfer fees.

Sadly, the Lampard Factor kicked in.

I’m told that the Yokohama F. Marinos boss had done his due diligence and was fully aware of the massive overhaul required on Mickey B’s squad of Gumtree Galacticos.

Moreover, it would take anything between three and five transfer windows to fix the current shitshow.

So, it came down to Philippe.

You DO get what you pay for, and I’m assured that he’s definitely on more than Mickey B was pulling down from the basket of assets.

The Belgian did have other, more lucrative offers, for sure.

What swung it was the pitch that, at Ibrox, he has a blank canvas.

To succeed at Sevco, he needs three things:

Time.

Finance.

Luck.

The first two are in the gift of the Sevco High Command.

Of course, like any manager at Ibrox, he can count on the obedient support of the local media and an extraordinary run of…err…good fortune when it comes to officiating calls.

To finish on an upbeat note, it was an entire calendar month from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28^th, 1914, until the outbreak of hostilities that would turn Europe into a slaughterhouse.

The thing about hinge factors is that no one spots them at the time.

Lest we forget…