So the Sevco paranoia is now in full tilt.
It’s everybody else’s fault that they are not as good as us.
It’s the politicians.
It’s the police.
It’s the SFA.
And their favourite, it’s Peter Lawell’s (and as a result Celtic’s) influence inside the corridors of the SFA/SPFL.
Now to understand this delusion, you have to know where it comes from.
Sevco fans have been ruined by their desire to link the club to Rangers.
For over 100 years the Ibrox club had influence on all of the above mentioned, and over that time a lot of their victories were partly because of that. It can be seen in individual games and in competitions all through the decades.
But this wasn’t only about helping them; at times that pressure went towards directly ensuring we did not win games and tournaments against other teams.
All the Sevco fans reading this just now can go as blue in the face as they like, claiming paranoia … but there is proof of this. For one thing, seven of the European cup team in 1967 were picked for a Scotland friendly, when five of them barely featured for Scotland.
We have had blatant penalty decisions given against us that would take your breath away. There was the referee who “heard contact”; that excuse came out because he was on camera and was clearly shown not to be looking at the incident he gave the penalty for.
This says nothing for Farry, EBT’s, refs who openly boasted about fixing games after the fact, the number of them who do after dinner Lodge circuits etc … I could go on.
These are of course football related.
There is social proof too.
Their “we are the people” nonsense comes from a deep well of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice which goes down into Scottish history.
Our association with Ireland, and the perception some still have of us as a “Catholic club” keep those kind of prejudices alive and well.
There was the Pastor from Glasgow who, in the early part of the 20th century, said that Irish Catholics should not be allowed in and those here deported as they would “dilute Scottish protestant blood”
There were the many jobs which you could not, and in some cases still cannot, attain in this country if you attended a Catholic school, and yes I am directly linking Catholicism and football because the statement “keep religion out of football” is a cop out and used to divert the argument from its core, which was that a lot of the Sevco supports defines itself as Protestant and Unionist.
And it was the links to these distasteful ideas that kept the now dead Rangers influential. They nurtured the superiority complex and they were successful.
That’s why I laugh when I read some of them claiming that the erosion of their influence in our society has led to the downfall of their club … it’s not completely true, but it’s not complete nonsense either. What’s happened is that their influence has been removed … and that has limited the amount of help that they get from outside agencies.
And because the fans of Sevco bought into the survival lie of Rangers, and because that club used its influence in a corrupt manner, these fans believe that any influence is corrupt influence.
That is not the case.
You can have influence which is positive, ethical and honest.
Celtic do have influence just now at home and in Europe (that’s the influence that Rangers could never get), and what Celtic do with that influence is all three of those things.
We have campaigned for years for these things in Scottish and European football and now that we have an opportunity to influence them.
It’s not who has the power that matters, it’s what you use that power for.
We want to use it for the betterment of the game.
I cannot understand why that scares the Peepul so much, except that they believe they are the only people who should benefit from any decision that is taken. They are afraid of light being shone into dark corners, whereas we welcome scrutiny and value openness.
We are now at the front of the bus, we are positive, we are ethical and we are honest.
Nothing makes them crazier.
Except that we’re winning too. That combination has driven them mad.
David Campbell is sick of the paranoid wailing from Ibrox and its criminal chairman.