Mark Warburton has given an interview to The Times in London, where he has again laid out his version of what happened to him at Ibrox. In it he confirms everything we said when he was dumped by the club, that he was fired, that he did not resign, that the club manufactured that story and then engaged in one of the most vicious press briefings of all time.
And all that is fair enough. But what he said on top of that was … odd.
He talked of how a forum published his personal number and how that ended up with him receiving death threats. That’s not the unusual part, of course, because this is the Sevco support we’re talking about here, on the weekend where the club’s officially endorsed and recognised fan group has issued a leaflet reeking of racism and incitement to violence.
Death threats go with that club like Jack Daniels and a handful of ice cubes. He wouldn’t be the first and he sure as Hell won’t be the last. Ungrateful, hysterical, vicious, unhinged … that’s the support he pandered to the whole time he was there. They bought it all as long as he was winning, and they turned on him the minute reality set in.
All of that is well and good, all of that confirms what we knew about the Peepul he was dealing with.
But dig into the details, as quoted in The Record, and you find something unexpected.
“”I got a huge amount of abuse and death threats that weekend,” he said. “The phone number I had for over 10 years was posted on the Internet and the calls and messages were endless. I walking to a friend’s for dinner on the Saturday and looked at my phone, which said ‘inbox full’. There were 910 text messages and 40-odd voicemails. Every time I went to use my phone it was ringing, and I couldn’t work out what was going on. I drove from Glasgow to London on the Sunday and couldn’t speak to my wife. I couldn’t use my phone so my wife didn’t know what was going on.
“Some of the messages and threats were horrendous, whether they were from Celtic fans or Rangers fans who thought I had walked out on the club, I don’t know ….”
And that’s where I go “Whoa! Roll back a bit there …”
What the Hell is he bringing us into this for? Let’s face it, if Celtic fans were going to call that guy that weekend it would have been to congratulate him on a job well done and to tell him to hang in there in spite of the media onslaught and take his unfair dismissal case every step of the way. This blog offered him exactly that advice on the evening he was sacked.
The idea that Celtic fans issued death threats to a guy who’s contribution to our club’s history was ushering the era of Brendan Rodgers and then losing 5-1 to his team … I think not. I’m guessing that when he talks about his number being published online it wasn’t on a Celtic site. So it’s kind of obvious to me, and I’m sure to him, who did the threatening.
I can only assume that this is a crude attempt to smear us, and he picked one Hell of a weekend to do it when their fans are mired in a scandal. Hey, either that or The Daily Record took his actual words in The Times interview and … added a few of their own.
I’m not ruling it out. I would put nothing past them.
Either way though, the central thrust of it is nonsense.
We might never have given Warburton the freedom of the city – he was arrogant, he allowed himself to become mired in the whole “ethos” of their “culture” far too quickly – but he squandered a fortune over there and took their club precisely nowhere. Just like Pedro, who came after him.
We’ll remember these guys for the amusement they provided.
Nobody gets death threats for making people laugh.
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