Der Bomber is the kind of guy you wish would just shut up and stop embarrassing the game here. Then you remember that he’s an ambassador for his club and you smile. Because he’s a symbol of everything wrong with the current Ibrox regime; insular, ignorant, bigoted, small-minded, intellectually challenged.
Speaking to The Record, Brown gave another sterling display of all that.
I have a lot of fun at Brown’s expense on this site. He earned that contempt. I recall reading Hugh Keevins offer a glowing article on his merits as a man in which he wrote that Brown once refused green jelly at a party the hack attended with him. I don’t know if this was supposed to be endearing somehow. If it was, I can only thank God I’ve never had to rely on Keevins for my own character reference. I’d be banged up, guilty or not.
Brown’s incoherent ranting is legendry, it really is. People in years to come will not be able to say his name without sniggering and will be baffled that the media put such great store in the things the guy says. Hey, I’m not alone here; check out the response to anything he says on the forums of the Ibrox fans. They wish someone would tape up his mouth. They can’t stand him. They do think he’s a clown, and most don’t value his association with the club.
He has interviewed for the “number three role” at the club; let’s start with that.
What is a “number three role” at a club? A club has a manager, an assistant manager, and a number of coaches. What is this “number three” nonsense? They’ve just sacked their goalkeeping coach; presumably he’ll be replaced. They will bring in some other coaches. Is the media trying to convince us that one coach is more important than another?
Has this been made clear to everyone at the club? Do the current “ordinary” coaches know whoever gets this job will be their boss?
This is another example of media drivel.
I don’t believe there needs to be a “local presence” on anybody’s coaching team. Football is played on the big green thing with the white lines painted around it. It’s not played in the wider community. I don’t believe Caixinha believes that either, and I suspect he’ll see this “local coach” role as a ridiculous waste of time and trouble.
But Brown has laid out his view on what that role is “important” for. And as per usual it’s no more than embarrassing rubbish. This is about “understanding the culture”, as if anyone couldn’t pick up a history book or play a YouTube clip of the Celtic Park toilets being wrecked to get where Brown is coming from here.
“He needs people round about him to tell him and let him understand about Scottish football and the way the game is played, and the feelings that are against (us) …”
And there it is. He needs someone who understands the Victim Lie, how put upon the club is. He needs someone to instil in him the paranoia that eventually infected Mark Warburton’s outlook and made him the spikey person in front of the media we saw towards the end of his Ibrox tenure. This is Brown’s prescription for “success”; that Caixinha should take a big whiff of the toxicity and the reek of the madhouse.
As I said in an earlier piece, Caixinha is here to run our rivals and so I cannot and do not wish him well, but it would be a dreadful beginning for him if he bought into this absurd nonsense, and allowed it to creep under his roof.
What that club needs is a fresh start.
When this appointment is announced – and it will be some fanfare for a simple coaching role – you’ll know how much of one they’ve got.