By answering one simple question Roy Hodgson has exposed and taken apart the extensive Ibrox spin machine.
Signing Jemain Defoe wasn’t enough for the Sevco mob, he had to have snubbed a few giants to help reinforce their misplaced and comical superiority complex,
Eighteen months is a long long time in football. In the summer of 2017 after helping Sunderland to relegation to The Championship half of the EPL were keen on signing Defoe on as a free agent.
The logic was that he was good for a dozen goals a season which would help ensure another season with the £100m plus golden ticket of EPL football.
Out of all the offers that he received the one from Bournemouth was the most ridiculous. A three year deal taking him to within sight of his 38th birthday that should gross around £20m. Lovely jubbly and Bournemouth suddenly has the most jealous dressing room in the country.
Four goals last season and half an hour of EPL football this term and Bournemouth are virtually giving him away but that story isn’t good enough for the heavyweights in the Ibrox spin machine.
Football London published a transcript of Hodgson’s pre-match media conference:
FOOTBALL LONDON: Jermain Defoe said this week that he turned down Palace to go to Rangers?
ROY HODGSON: That’s not true. Did people check that?
FL: That’s what he has been saying?
RH: Well, it is not true unfortunately. We had no interest in Jermain Defoe.
FL: Is it true you are still looking for another striker in this window?
RH: He is like a number of strikers, I have seen his name mentioned in relation to the club, but it is one thing people relating their players who are anxious to find a move for to our club, and it is another thing with our club initiating moves to sign a player. And I can state, quite categorically, that we made no move at all to sign him. I like Jermain Defoe, I have worked with him and he is a good player and I am pleased he has joined Glasgow Rangers, but we weren’t candidates to sign him.
The favoured script of massive club/huge fanbase/ great challenge/amazing history has been trotted out by all sorts of no-marks from Joey Barton to Pedro Caixinha with this season’s crop equally adept at providing the gullible with what they want to hear.
Before the month is out Defoe’s rusty old limbs will have visited the plastic pitches of Kilmarnock and Livingston, reality will kick in and we’ll discover if Mr King has uncovered £19m for a share issue or is about to spend some time in the pleasure of Her Majesty.
With losses close to 50% of turnover the SFA are clearly turning a blind eye to governance at Ibrox, something that didn’t help the old club as they eventually went into liquidation helped by a billionaire from Motherwell.
As the gullible lap up the good news spewing out of Ibrox everyone else in Scotland knows how this movie ends, with the punchline of ‘ah but naebdy telt us’.
