I was asked last night, somewhat sarcastically, what I thought the media should say when someone in football offers up a misleading view over what happened to Rangers in 2012.
The question was asked after last night’s article about Paul Lambert; I knew the Lambert interview was certain to leap into the mainstream. I also knew how they’d cover it.
And I was moaning about that.
“Well how would you write it?” I was asked.
Let’s start with the headlines. The headlines accept the premise of Lambert’s point. Why do they? They are quoting him, but why? The media could do what it does with other issues and write “Paul Lambert Believes In Fairies At The Bottom Of The Garden.”
From there the rest of the article writes itself. Tell it like it is. Say the point he is making is risible nonsense. Because that’s exactly what it is. Why is it difficult to say?
His interview is ridiculous, as I said last night, but let’s take a look at why, which the media has not done. Their articles are written for those with an attention span of 60 seconds; I have a smarter readership by far.
He says, first, that the “decision” to “demote” the club was bad for the national team.
Does he want to explain that to us?
Were there suddenly less Scottish players?
Did it affect the footballing gene pool? Of course it didn’t.
Every good Scottish player at Ibrox the club like they were leaving a room where someone farted. Many of them ended up playing football in England, where we keep on hearing the standard is better.
No-one has called that assertion nonsense, but it plainly, obviously is.
It is ignorant garbage.
“Celtic and Rangers, in years gone by, provided a lot of players for the national team and it’s mainly Celtic now,” he said. “That’s the bigger picture and people hadn’t really thought it through. Nobody thought, ‘Well how is this going to affect Scotland, the league itself, Glasgow as a city?’
What is this bullshit?
The “bigger picture” was that one team no longer has so many players in the national team?
Does Lambert need someone to explain the phrase “bigger picture” to him?
The idea that it affected Scotland, except that the after effects legitimized fake news and fake facts here long before those terms were in vogue elsewhere is insulting to all of us. It did affect Glasgow, which is now “green and white”, but that’s just a consequence of one club rising as another falls.
Lambert’s comments make not one iota of sense.
It reminds me of watching the amateurs who once ran the Stirling University Debate Society; I once trounced their captain in a debate I had literally five minutes to prepare for, arguing a point I didn’t even believe in because they were so lousy at it. They would start with a position and do no prep work whatsoever, do no research, learn no facts and simply say whatever popped into their heads in the moment.
Lambert seems to have started out with the Victim Lie and worked backwards, with no clear thought, based only on the idea that victimising Rangers was a bad idea. If that’s what had actually happened then it would have been a bad idea, but the premise itself was faulty. No wonder his argument sucks.
Scottish football did not suffer from making Sevco start in the bottom tier. It was enhanced by that decision. Its sporting integrity certainly was. Scotland fans do not care whether their players come from one club or ten – even at our best these past five or so years we’ve never contributed more than six players to the team at one time by the way, so the idea that the bulk of the squad comes from one club is also rabid nonsense.
Lambert also appears not to be celebrating the number of internationals who come from teams like Hibs, Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Hearts and elsewhere, as if this was a negative. More stupidity.
Every newspaper report I have read simply printed Lambert’s remarks without doing any sort of analysis of the content. They saw a chance to push a story where an ex-Celtic captain had supported the Victim and Survival lies and that was enough for them.
A real media would called Lambert out on what he said and called it exactly what it is.
A despicable slur on Scottish football.
But not our media.
They have spent so long pushing the same lies I wonder if they even remember the truth anymore.