Stephen McGowan has owned up that journalists often just make up transfer fees!
It is quite a confession to make, coming a day after it was revealed that, contrary to perception, the sales of five top Ibrox stars this summer brought in just £810,000.
But, but, but squealed the angry bears on the back of being spoon fed comforting tales to cover up the distressed finances at both of their clubs.
Dave Murray was the absolute master of the craft, keeping a raft of reporters on message with a steady stream of information plus direct access to the great man whenever they were in need of a back page or a splash.
Tales of lavish spending suited both parties. For every fiver Celtic spend he would spend a tenner was the real stand-out from the House of Murray. Everyone was a winner with the reporter getting his scoop while Murray’s ego was further massaged with the feel-good factor passed on to the gullible readership.
That gig ended when Craig Whyte rolled a pound coin across an oak panelled desk in Edinburgh. He picked up the keys to Ibrox, the crippling debt, Ally McCoist’s contract and the incoming tax bill. Plus the unpaid Wee Tax Case demand.
Similar practices have been carried on at the Ibrox Tribute Act, rather than alert readers to the distressed state of finances at the club during the summer it was agreed that austerity would be rebranded as a rebuild. The messengers were all on board for it.
The extravagant spending carried out by Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Micky Beale coupled by generous contract renewals failed to stop Celtic from rattling off three more league titles, taking them to within one of the mythical 55, a clear distress point for bears.
At the 2023 AGM John Bennett warned that £10m needed to be removed from expenditure, that warning was ignored as A Proper Football Manager delivered the League Cup with an Ibrox quadruple trophy lift just a matter of timing away.
That expectation wasn’t delivered, word emerged that a clear out was needed but as those involved in the property business know so well that requires buyers. If there are no buyers there is no deal.
The Daily Record went to incredible lengths to drum up mega-bucks deals from Al Ettifaq to sign James Tavernier and Connor Goldson. Unfortunately Steven Gerrard wasn’t interested.
Agents knew that they had licence to shift players on for nothing more than a token fee, that soon evolved into pay offs and wage subsidies.
Meanwhile in the land of the messengers the transfer fees were pouring into Ibrox. Sam Lammers was sold for £2.7m to Utrecht without anything from the Netherlands to back up that fee.
ARIS Limassol have barely paid out a six figure fee in their history but the bears were informed that Goldson was sold for £1.7m plus add-ons! Or take-aways. The Cypriot side didn’t go anywhere near the wages Goldson was due for the remaining two years on his Ibrox deal.
The true figure was revealed last month in the audited 2024 Report by the club but most fans and messengers preferred to look the other way.
Legacy media went big on the transfer fee revelation from the AGM even though they were highlighting their own inaccuracy.
Throwing his hands up to confess, writing in the Daily Mail, McGowan explains:
When it comes to transfer fees, journalists should probably come clean on one of the unspoken truths around the whole business.
While agents have been known to offer off-the-record steers on how much a player costs from time to time, clubs rarely offer up any info at all.
Steeped in secrecy, the ‘undisclosed fees’ reported every time a player moves are often approximations, assumptions or speculation. Or, in the case of Sam Lammers, completely made up.
A lost cause in Glasgow, the striker moved to FC Utrecht on loan last January and immediately went on the kind of scoring run no-one knew he had in his locker.
When he started banging them in like Ruud van Nistelrooy on performance-enhancing steroids, Rangers fans rubbed their eyes in disbelief.
They were at it again when finance director James Taylor confessed that a No 9 who had scored 19 goals in 41 Dutch league appearances since January was one of the players who’d left for buttons instead of the £2.5million fee the club seemed happy to let people run with.
The Nathan Patterson hype comes to mind.
When a £5m windfall is disclosed as £810,000 no one comes out smelling of roses.
Next month there will be further cost cutting at Ibrox with agents and buying clubs knowing that they have the upper hand.
We’ll soon discover if the legacy media has learned any lessons from the summer, whether they serve up more moonbeams or a tasteless diet of austerity founded on realism.
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1 Comment
by Martin G
Can a leopard change its spots ?
Nah, at best it’ll be back to undisclosed fees