Someone asked me the other day if there was one sure-fire way of knowing that there is trouble at Ibrox. The answer is yes, of course. The clearest sign of trouble inside Ibrox is a story about Celtic popping up somewhere. It was ever thus.
Late last year, I wrote a Fields piece on the “war for hearts and mind” online. I talked about how PR firms have, at times, waged war on our club and on select bloggers. You only had to look at the way the media went after Paul Larkin to see that it still happens. If people are unable to argue with the message, the tactic has long been to shoot the messenger.
Do you want to know whether Paul’s documentary is worth watching or not? Take a look at the reactions of the press and the Sevco supporters. Most of them haven’t seen it. But they know danger when it’s in the wind, and the word went out “Kill it.”
That they got a small number of idiots from our own support to attack the guy on social media proves that these tactics are occasionally effective. That’s why it is important to keep watching what these people get up to.
There was a sterling example of it just this week.
Earlier in the week, I wrote about the email I’d received from a Sevco fan in which he assured me that Celtic Park was falling down. Wow, right? It’s one Hell of an allegation, one Hell of a story. The guy said basically that this was something everyone knows; funny, then, that it was news to me and I gather from the readers reactions that it was new to them too.
But I had checked social media for traces of this nonsense and it didn’t take me long to find that the story was out there, doing the rounds. But I had no idea where such a madcap tale had originated or what the ultimate purpose of it might be.
Phil heard the same story. And he was able to trace it to the source.
And as ridiculous as this will sound to rational, sane, people the source was Ibrox and its dark PR arm. They got this story into the ether via one of their stupider conduits, the Village Idiot we know here as The State Aid Nutjob. Curiously enough, I had written about him in the article itself, laying out the daft campaign he ran – tantamount to attention seeking, with public funding – to try and “prove” that we had benefited from government support.
An organisation is in desperate straits when it is trying to divert attention from itself by making up utterly fictitious tales about its richer, better run rival. You have to ask yourself; if they are resorting to this kind of nonsense, just how bad are things over there?
Bad. Very bad indeed. You think the news about Club 1872 getting ready to “invest” £1 million came out of nowhere? That’s a sure sign that the club had already gone cap in hand to the fans to ask them if they can help meet the financial shortfall.
For the record, £1 million barely makes a dent in their troubles. It will last them about a month, if they are very lucky.
That club needs to start making cuts, and I have one recommendation for them, if they are willing to take some advice; ditch the PR firm. They are a waste of money, and this is wholly representative of the piss-poor standard of their work.
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