It’s fair to say that the two articles I’ve posted today on Caixinha’s incredibly crass and bigoted decision not only to ban green boots from the Ibrox dressing room but to announce that he wants to paint the words We Are The People on the walls, both home and away, has been a mixture of anger, dismay, astonishment and disgust.
Disgust is far and away the overwhelming emotion.
Most people agree that the green boots is just the act of a small man in a place with a small club mentality, but the revulsion at the decision to daub a sectarian and racist slogan on the walls is being almost universally condemned. At times like these it’s instructive, I think, to look beyond our own support at what other people are saying, and I think it’s pretty clear the fans of other clubs are just as outraged.
AllyJambo, one of the most articulate posters over on the Scottish Football Monitor, a Hearts fan who abhors this stuff, shares the letter I put up earlier from a female Celtic supporter and friend of mine, to agree with every sentiment she expressed and his attitude is pretty representative of that I’ve seen elsewhere. This has shocked people who thought they were beyond the point where anything that happened here could do that to them.
Needless to say, the reaction over in Sevconia is a little different. It’s shocking in a different way; I wasn’t remotely surprised by anything I read on their forums, but it’s chilling to gauge those reactions just the same. These people are out of their minds.
The nice way to put it is that they are happy about this. Some are ecstatic.
Their responses have ranged from smiley faces and Union Jack waving emoji’s to genuinely disturbing comments; one posted that “It’s good to see our manager also hates catholics,” apparently in all seriousness and complete f@@ckwitted ignorance of Caixinha’s own religion and that of every single player he has signed so far with the exception, perhaps, of Ryan Jack, who’s denomination I have neither the slightest clue about or the slightest interest in.
Some of them have praised him for raising “the standards” of the club; what, by wallowing in filth and pettiness? Others have praised it for restoring their “dignity”; I mean, Jesus wept. Dignity. In cheap stunts and deliberately setting out to cause offence? Are these people having a laugh or what? And of course, there’s that old standby that suddenly he “gets” their club and the “culture” that surrounds it. Which is hard to argue with.
To the rest of the world, these are the actions of a guy who’s taken complete leave of his senses.
Their club looks utterly ridiculous, and some of them are going on about it as if this solves all their problems. One moron compared these actions with “what Bill Shankly did when he took over at Liverpool”; I never realised there were coloured boots in those days, and I am aware of no story about Shankly which has him scrawl a racist insult onto the walls of the away dressing room. I’m fairly sure that story would be pretty well known.
This is the reaction I expected. It’s the reaction I’m sure we all expected. But for all that, it’s something to truly marvel at. Because this kind of behaviour is not normal. The level of hate is not rational or right. You read their responses and you become aware, at once, that either they possess not one ounce of self-awareness or that they do and know exactly how appalling it makes them and their club look and simply do not give a damn.
They are celebrating this, a demonstration of how insular and narrow-minded they and their club are. The consequence of it couldn’t be more stark; when those same fans were in the direst need and Rangers was circling the drain nobody came to their aid.
This, days like today, stunts like this, would be exactly why.
And it’s why there will be no rush to stop this particular Ibrox operation from collapsing into its grave.
No-one likes them. They don’t care.
But they will.