Articles

Fear And Loathing In Govan: Rangers Couldn’t Have Matched Us, Sevco Sure As Heck Won’t.

|
Image for Fear And Loathing In Govan: Rangers Couldn’t Have Matched Us, Sevco Sure As Heck Won’t.

If you are listening to music, turn it down.

If there is someone ranting in your ear right now turn to them, and as pleasantly as you can, tell them to please shut the goddamned Hell up.

Whatever it is you have on, hit the mute button for just a moment.

Bring down some silence, and listen …

There it is.

In the background.

Gnashing of teeth. A low-tone wailing.

You hear it, right?

Yeah, I’ve been listening to it all day long and it sure is fine.

That is the sound of pain.

It was Michael Hutchence who said “bitter tears taste so sweet” but I am betting that there are a lot of people out there right now who want to vomit on them. But watching those tears roll down the hollowed cheeks of a hard-drinking Sevconut … well that’ll do me nicely my friends.

Not everyone over there is sitting in a puddle of those tears.

Some refuse to.

They cling to this supremacist nonsense instead.

They convince themselves that it’s good enough to wake up in the morning “one of the Peepul” a relic of bygone days of yore. That there is some merit in having a 17th century outlook in the 21st century world. That supporting a NewCo and pretending it’s the DeadCo is not absolutely loopy.

The Master Race, eah? Jesus wept.

These people are the last of their kind.

They have to be.

Surely no generation to come can look at them and think it’s something to emulate?

There was a time, once, when Britannia ruled the waves and had the empire on which the sun never set. Now European leaders take it in turns to laugh at Westminster’s “negotiators”, and hide their folders when their backs are turned. The empire is over.

Britain is a third rate power.

It’s fitting that the Sevco fans cling to this, the supporters of a third rate football club.

They go together like coffee and hobnobs.

Some of them still have that swagger we once associated with Rangers fans, but of late they’ve been stumbling, like their legs are made of jelly. They are no longer the big boys. The club they follow is a shattered ruin, constructed out of the bits of a shattered ruin. They try to get themselves excited over games against SPL teams as we prepare for the biggest competition in club football, but even then their expectation is tempered slightly.

It’s tempered by fear.

Fear of the unknown, what new crisis might be right around the corner. Fear of the known. The behemoth on the south side which jerked into wakefulness when their side won a penalty shootout at Hampden the season before last.

We were never weak.

Just asleep.

Yamamoto said it best; “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” He at least had the sense to be sombre. They celebrated that day, as if they’d won something. And it was only the semi. We know what happened when they returned for the final.

The fear is there now. Of course it is. But late in the day. Like being afraid of being robbed for your bus-fare after someone’s already taken your wallet and your watch. But the fear is real, and so are the reasons for it. They are in big, big trouble.

Here’s the problem.

They’ve spent all this time trying to be Rangers, and Rangers expect to challenge Celtic, and they expect to take every team outside of Glasgow. They expect these teams to be afraid. But none of them are now. The fear only exists inside. Inside their own dressing room. Inside their own walls.

No-one else fears them.

Other managers snigger when they hear the pretentious nonsense that comes out of Ibrox.

Neil Lennon got right to the heart of it when he slagged the Club 1872 statement the other day, “Like it was written by a 15 year old.”

Well that 15 year old sits on the board there.

No wonder people are laughing at them.

And when the only fear is that which you smell on yourself, it’s no wonder that your other default emotion is hate. Of everyone, really. And in that hate, and in the grip of the fear, you can convince yourself of anything.

Like the Grand Conspiracy.

The Grand Conspiracy is the finest ever conceived.

It has united Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Jews.

It brings together the political and financial elite with guys who runs blogs. Oh yes. Guys like me.

It stretches across the globe, into the halls of power of the rich and famous.

Its tendrils are everywhere … and nowhere. I say nowhere because no proof of The Grand Conspiracy actually exists.

But of course, every SevcoNut knows it exists, right?

From referees giving decisions against them to the tax authorities in Britain and South Africa squeezing them until the pipsqueaks squeak, the Grand Conspiracy keeps them down. Keeps them from realising their potential.

Whatever that is.

Ever pondered what the Whites Only Homeland., which the right’s most extreme commentators occasionally call for, would look like if they could have it?

Look at how Sevco is run.

There’s your answer right there. Not a pretty picture.

The Grand Conspiracy binds Tories and Labourites together.

It reaches into Westminster and Holyrood.

Celtic runs Scotland, apparently.

You ever hear the SevcoNuts talk about how committed they are to their club?

Well if the Grand Conspiracy in which they believe actually exists it redefines commitment to your team.

Because all involved are willing to go to enormous lengths and expend enormous amounts of political and financial capital to break laws and risk their freedom … to ensure Celtic’s dominance over football in this country.

Football in Scotland.

The backwater, as they never tire of telling us.

Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven, I guess, right?

These Peepul are barking, of course.

The toughest thing for them to wrap their brains around is that we did this on merit, that there was no cheating involved, and that the downfall of their first club and the shocking state of the second was their own damned fault.

Rangers couldn’t match us when they were at their strongest.

Not without cheating.

They didn’t have the money.

Look at the accounts going back through the years. We have consistently brought in more money than they have. We were the better run club. They overextended for years, betting it all on Champions League income. One bad year was all it was ever going to take. Their club was a shadow on the wall, nothing more.

It’s fashionable to blame the Motherwell Born Billionaire for what happened to them.

All Craig Whyte did was flush the toilet.

Their club was already in the shit.

This is the best run Celtic has ever been. Even firing on all cylinders, even running at peak performance, the OldCo from Ibrox would not have touched us.

So I ask you, how is this rag-bag mob going to?

Warburton was the man with the magic hat. Pedro’s glory years were in the bullring or out on a jet-ski. When this revolution of his blows up the board that hired him after a single interview will beat him like a piñata. He doesn’t inspire much sympathy.

Their fans are still not adapted to their current place in the world.

I hope they all videoed the cup semi-final of two years back. For all their talk about outplaying us that day, they were very damned lucky to get us to penalties. It wasn’t great, but that was as good as it gets and whilst Pedro is in the dugout or King is in the boardroom it’ll never get that good again.

The fear and loathing in Govan is all good for a laugh.

At some point even they have to realise that they need to stop with the supremacy and just accept what they are for a wee while. If you crunch the numbers you know Rangers could not have lived with this Celtic team, even with the financial doping.

Sevco certainly will not.

Share this article