Articles

The Sense Of Entitlement Around Ibrox Is Going To Kill A Second Club.

|
Image for The Sense Of Entitlement Around Ibrox Is Going To Kill A Second Club.

If you have a moment tomorrow, download the Radio Clyde podcast and spend some time on the Sevco fan forums. Get an overview of the totality of the disconnect that exists between their fans and the reality the rest of us live in.

You will be astounded.

As we can all clearly see, the managerial hunt has descended into complete shambles. The decision not to get McInnes looks fully vindicated. I don’t think they could approach him now if they were getting him for free. The fans look at him and see a busted flush. The same applies to their other “best choice”, Graeme Murty, who’s chances of getting the job just swirled down the drain.

They sit in fourth spot. The fury of their supporters is as loud as I’ve ever heard it and I include the disastrous Rangers operation too and that is important because there is a link between what killed that club and what is slowly strangling this one.

It has nothing to do with the greed and over-reach of a few owners, or some scam behind the scenes.

It is because Ibrox is encased in a sense of entitlement that is impenetrable and suffocating. It is a toxic fume that has poisoned their support, has wrecked managerial reputations and threatens to bring down a second football operation.

Right now that looks absolutely certain; only a major change of attitude will prevent it. There is no sign of it.

Hamilton rolled up to Ibrox today with the media and everyone at the ground assuming the result was a foregone conclusion. Their players would have walked through the door at the crumbling façade of the main stand and into a dressing room where their perceived inferiority was written on the walls; Pedro’s lasting contribution to the club, a supremacist slogan designed to intimidate the opposition but which has inspired them instead.

Since this season began, and that nonsense was put up, Hibs, Hamilton and Celtic have gone there and won. Hearts and Kilmarnock have gone there and drawn. Opposing players look at that slogan and draw on it. They walk out into the noise and they know if they can score first or hold the game to 0-0 for a certain amount of time that the big crowd will turn on its own players and the advantage will shift significantly. It is a regular thing now.

You have guys like Holt, like Windass, like Jack pulling on the shirt and suddenly being told they are expected to meet someone else’s idea of what that shirt represents. They are supposed to become world beaters simply by pulling it on, because of this notion that a “Rangers player” has to win every single game. That idea is not simply wholly unrealistic, it is a complete fantasy. No wonder some of those players cannot take the pressure.

The club those fans believe they are watching died. And before it died it was, itself, being propped up by unsustainable spending. Had they been forced at any point to live within their means the success those fans remember would never have been.

Instead of realising that, and adjusting to the reality they find themselves in, they have adopted the most dangerous attitude imaginable; that their club should win every game as if by right. That their directors exist to fuel and fund their most fantastical ambitions.

I listened incredulously as one of their fans, on Clyde, made that very claim. That their directors not only shouldn’t bother with the money they’ve already thrown into the black hole but that they should be willing to throw in even more. “it’s the director’s job to fund the club” this eejit said. And I was shocked anyone could believe such a thing.

And then the anchor of the show said, “Good point.”

Eah? Good point?

It was ludicrous deranged nonsense, and that’s exactly what any sane person should have said to that guy. It’s the responsibility of directors to make sure a company is running sustainably. They are not there to plug holes in the balance sheet. What business school did these people go to? What do they know that Dermot Desmond and people like him don’t?

But that’s the trouble; these are the people who keep on feeding the beast, feeding this monstrous ego which towers over Ibrox like a mountain. These are the people who are encouraging ridiculous spending because “Rangers have to be top” even if the club they are talking about is dead and gone although some lunatic has dug up the corpse, robbed its clothes and draped them over Norman Bates FC and is pretending they are one in the same.

There’s a reason they called that movie “Psycho.”

That kind of behaviour is dangerous and destructive.

It. Is. Not. Normal.

Until it changes they will never progress.

They need to get past this, past this arrogance, past this entitlement, past this idea that they are bigger than they are.

Someone, at some point, if the current club is to survive, needs to sit down in front of a camera and tell these Peepul a few unpalatable truths; first that catching Celtic is off the agenda for a while, probably for years. Second, that their current level of spending is already unsustainable and until they can work magic and build a club that can pay its bills as they come due that some cutting needs to be done, for the sake of survival. Third is to forget the past. It is tainted. It belongs to someone else, and to another time, and even then it was not what it seemed.

I repeat what I’ve said before; this club has two choices. In one they accept they are a limited organisation, vastly overmatched, and decide to cut their cloth to suit and accept what sporting implications come with that or they can overreach.

In one of those scenarios their fans can continue to believe they are Rangers.

In the other they will be following a non-league Newco and believing they are Sevco.

Share this article