Articles

Jackson’s Piece On Miller And The Sevco PR Nightmare Is Hypocritical Nonsense.

|
Image for Jackson’s Piece On Miller And The Sevco PR Nightmare Is Hypocritical Nonsense.

Keith Jackson. Oh wow.

He’s really fallen out of love with the Sevco PR people now.

Today in his newspaper he launched a stunning attack on the Sevco press operation and, apparently, on Jim Traynor, his former mentor and a guy most of us wouldn’t trust further than we could throw him. Which, if you’ve seen the size of him, let’s face it isn’t very far.

Jackson’s article is full of the usual nonsense we associate with him, but it comes today with a big dose of hypocrisy as well. He’s talking about the Kenny Miller fiasco, doing as we predicted and taking the side of his pal over a manager he doesn’t like. He’s also settling, or trying to settle, some kind of ancient grudge at the same time … but let’s put aside whatever lovers tiff he’s had with Level 5 because there’s a bigger issue here.

He’s standing by his pal Miller.

He’s denying Miller was the source of the leaks to the paper. He can very well do that, and Miller might not have done it directly. But people inside Ibrox believe that the player was the source of the leak even if he was not the direct conduit for it. Jackson can mince words as much as he likes but he thinks we’ll all forget that there’s not just one agenda at play but two. This is not about Caixinha picking on a player.

This is about him cleaning out a dressing room filled with people who never took to him in the first place.

There are no Good Guys in this fight, even to an outside observer. A plague on all their houses as far as I’m concerned; the appointment of the manager was like a bad joke, but players can’t go around deciding who they will and won’t play for. There’s previous for this in the Ibrox dressing room.

It’s as if the club never learns from Rangers’ mistakes.

But more than that is the way Jackson has framed this, as a player as the victim of a tyrannical boss. I am frankly astounded that he’s chosen to write that as if he’s just finding this stuff out right now. This website has been calling Caixinha that for many months. Miller is actually the fifth member of Warburton’s old team to be cast into the reserves and I do not recall a single example of Jackson or anyone else crying the blues for the rest of them.

In fact, nearly all of the hacks wrote stories about what a hardliner Caixinha was, how tough he was being, how that was a demonstration of strength when, in fact, it was quite the opposite. Today Jackson calls him “a manager out of his depth.” Wow. And it took him an actual moment of rational thought to arrive at that conclusion, eah? One many of us had arrived at many moons ago, and in fact from the moment he was appointed.

The simple truth is, Caixinha is a blowhard and completely off his nut. He’s a rule by fear “you’ll do what you’re told just because” kind of a guy, and they are the worst types to give a manager’s job to. He is incapable of leading except by putting his foot down. Brendan came in at Celtic Park and transformed the mood, got players who were unhappy on board and didn’t have to take radical action against a single footballer … that’s a manager.

Caixinha’s treatment of his own players has been appalling, there’s no other word for it. But he had good reason with some of them, and with Miller he is on solid ground because the veteran striker is at the heart of a dressing room clique which does not wish the manager well.

Everyone knows this. It is not a secret, at Ibrox or anywhere else.

There have been players who Caixinha has shafted; Jackson did not stand up for them, and nor did the bulk of his media colleagues, those who are coming to the aid of their favourite son. O’Halloran was cruelly dismissed. Barrie McKay went from being a £6 million player to someone the club could afford to jettison for a pittance. Other first team footballers were flogged for chump change just to get them out of the way.

The club has been in freefall for months now, and Jackson and others were perfectly content to let Pedro wield the big stick as long as it wasn’t against one of their pals. The moment he transgressed that particular unwritten law out came the guns.

This isn’t confined to Caixinha. At Ibrox, players have been getting treated like shit for as long as Sevco has been around. Jackson wailed today at the reputational damage to Miller; is he kidding or what? Kenny Miller is 37. His career is almost over. If he wants to talk about potential career ending stuff he should talk to Joey Barton who at 33 still had some years left and who Jackson’s paper was happy to smear, even going as far as to print confidential medical info.

The Sevco PR arm has always been a shambles. It has always been ruthless. It has always been mercenary. And it has always relied on lickspittle toadies printing whatever it told them to. Jackson has some brass neck to criticise them for doing their work through a website this time … what’s the matter, Keith? Professional jealousy because they are no longer doing it through you? Seriously, this is just ridiculous.

Reading that today I laughed at the hypocrisy of it all.

The hacks are in full scale “protect their pal” mode, as per usual. If you’re an outsider up here you don’t stand a chance. Ask Ronny Deila, a good man they couldn’t wait to hound out of his job. Ask Paul Le Guen … his time at Ibrox did ruin his reputation and career, but no-one mourns him.

Ask Mark Warburton, who was forced out of his job at Ibrox only for the press to print, verbatim, the club line that he and his backroom team weren’t fired but had quit. The very word Jackson said was out of order because it came from Chris Sutton – calling Miller a rat – was at least implied in the case of the Forest manager and his backroom team.

No-one does double standards quite like Keith Jackson.

Share this article