RANGERS TAKEOVER: JACKSON PANICS AND BACKTRACKS AS DEAL STALLS
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
As I awoke this morning, around 7am Japan time, I heard the faint sound of glass breaking in the distance.
Now, having checked the morning papers, I’ve realized what that noise was...
Keith Jackson’s bottle crashing from an almighty height.
It seems all is not proceeding as Scotland’s staunchest Sevconian Stenographer had hoped.
Rangers Takeover "Should be Wrapped up by Now"
Speaking on the Daily Record’s “Hotline Live” podcast, Jackson said: “I think, to be perfectly honest with you, when we first broke the news that it was at advanced stages, I expected it to be finalized, to be wrapped up, concluded before now.”
Oh, did you Keith?
Maybe if you’d taken off those blue-tinted specs for just a split-second, you might have realized it was a lot more complicated than that.
Also, to his claim that talks were “at an advanced stage” in February, the sole source for this claim is Jackson himself saying “trust me mate, it’s true, honest.”
Call me cynical, but when someone is as habitually wrong in their predictions as Jackson, I’m not inclined to take anything he says at face value.
With Jackson looking flustered, and somewhat deflated, it fell to other members of the Daily Record Sports Desk to keep the Ibrox good vibes wagon chugging along.
And as usual, lacking any originality or independent thought of their own, the natural instinct of The Daily Record was to take something from Rangers fan media, and regurgitate it as if it were their own work.
In this case, it was a piece written for the site Ibrox News, interviewing Dr Dan Plumbley of Sheffield Hallam University. Dr Plumbley lectures in sports finance.
As usual, the Record plucked a few choice quotes out of the story, didn’t bother applying any context, and just served it up as the typical, 100% positive good news for Rangers that their readership demands.
To quote Dr Plumbley in the Record, he said of the Rangers Takeover: “It’s probably quicker than I would have expected, if we cast our minds back a few weeks, if it does get to the stage where they’re at the place in April, that’s a really quick turnaround in the context of where these takeovers seem to land.”
Now, I don’t doubt the good doctor’s integrity but something doesn’t add up here. Jackson claimed negotiations have been going on in the background since October. Again, we only have his word for that.
With that bit of added context, what Dr Plumbley said doesn’t make much sense, until we see the full quote from him, in its full context.
Responding directly to what he read in the Daily Record, Plumbley said: “If what you’re telling me is correct, it’s probably quicker than I would have expected.”
That’s the kind of qualified, rational and impartial statements we expect from our top academics. But that’s not the kind of sycophantic crap that sells newspapers. Hence the Daily Record’s minor tweak, which completely alters the intention of the statement.
To add insult to injury, when asked about this directly, Jackson seemed to have no idea about this story, printed that same day, in his own newspaper.
“I don’t know where you are going with this. Professor Dan Plumley?” was his puzzled response.
Maybe some poor soul, with more money than brain cells, is dumb enough to buy Rangers, maybe they aren’t.
But based on this latest nonsense, it seems the bold Keith is even less clued up on this whole situation than we are.