Today The Daily Mail – the right wing yahoo’s newspaper of choice – is running an article where Jamie Redknapp talks about how “ready” Steven Gerrard is for the job at Ibrox. Apparently Redknapp “looked into his eyes” and saw it. What absolute bollocks. I mean, really. All over the country, numerous psychotherapists have looked into the eyes of people who swore blind that they were French generals about to walk onto a battlefield.
And in their insanity, they would have been very convincing.
Am I saying that Gerrard is insane? No, of course not. I’m saying that Redknapp might be. I’m saying that the editor who commissioned that piece most probably is. I’m saying that anyone who lends a single ounce of credibility to such a story is definitely in need of a good talking to by someone with a professional qualification in mental health.
I am ever amazed at the way the media is able to leap from one positive Sevco story to another, and rarely with any engagement with the real world. They are connected by a steady stream of consciousness that indulges wishful thinking to a fare-thee-well. This is just one in a long line of them. Redknapp, like many others south of the border, knows the sum total of nil about life up here in Scotland. He certainly knows nothing about the league.
The one team he mentions in the article – apart from Sevco – is Celtic. And that’s the trouble with the mind-set right there. When he acknowledges that there are other teams in the country at all he claims that “beating (them) is a scalp and beating Steven Gerrard’s (team) will be a bigger scalp.” What tripe that is. Beating Sevco has become routine for certain teams and not just Celtic. Sides no longer fear them. Sides no longer believe the hype.
The past few days have actually been a steady litany of reversals at Ibrox, but that’s not the way the media has presented it. On the transfer front they’ve already had one very high profile knock-back and others are rumoured to be in the offing. Their scrambling around for Brighton’s third choice centre back shows the absolute limits of their ambition.
But the media moves from one positive Sevco story to another effortlessly, with ease. It is almost as if the Scottish press works in tandem with the club to try to assure a constant wave of positive spin. Some will call it The Gerrard Effect; funny that it was also on display with Caixinha and with Warburton before him. It’s an endless cycle of good press, positivity, and sometimes its about selling season tickets and at other times simply about keeping up morale.
Yet it always ends. When the football starts the nonsense tends to stop.
I don’t anticipate things being any different this time around.