The Daily Record wheeled out one of its Ibrox bloggers today to cry the blues over the relationship their fans have with the national team.
This is the kind of pitiful wailing we’ve come to expect from the Peepul, and as per usual it refuses to take a number of things into account.
Let’s start with the primary one; their fans are the ones who made the break in the first place, over numerous grievances both real and imagined.
The article actually dredges up some of this nonsense, such as Scotland fans booing Lee Wallace (they never did) and also Ian Black, which is true, but only because he was chosen for the squad because of a media clamour for his inclusion which was not remotely justified considering his own quality and that of the league he was playing in.
That anger was damn all to do with the club they were playing for; it was about the level at which they were playing. The idea that Scotland should be picking players from the bottom tier was obviously absurd, no matter what the club they played for called itself.
Crying over this and turning it into evidence of how much their club is hated … I’m sorry, but that’s just moon howling garbage. Scotland fans knew what was perfectly obvious to everyone with half a brain; Black, in particular, was a shocking selection.
Scotland fans were furious because the media was telling the manager he had to pick players from the fourth division just because the club they played for called itself Rangers, and the national coach was going along with that farce.
Those decisions were frankly embarrassing to the country.
The Ibrox fan-base weren’t exactly looking for reasons to fall out with the SFA anyway; they already believed in the Victim Lie, although the rest of us realise it’s also nonsensical. It doesn’t help that the media has shamefully and shamelessly promoted it.
They saw the SFA as the enemy, and therefore they saw the national team as an extension of that.
I can sympathise … but I don’t hate the national team … I just don’t want to watch Doncaster and others preening around at the finals as though they achieved something.
Lastly, there’s a virulent strain of uber-unionism in their support which won’t quit.
That section of their fan-base has becoming astonishingly anti-Scottish and they don’t want to see the national team do well under any circumstances because they think it boosts Scottish nationalist sentiment. Not that it needs boosting with support for independence at an all-time high.
I have my own issues with the Scottish national team, because I refuse to separate it from an entire SFA structure which needs ripped up and started again, but I don’t actively wish my country ill and I don’t feel like me and other Celtic fans have been “excluded” on account of the club we support, although most of us detest the governing body.
But this wailer, this whiner, was taking up a theme I’ve read from other Ibrox fan writers; that their country has turned against them and that the only way they feel they can be “allowed” to support their country is if they renounce their club.
Jesus, it is pathetic. How can anyone believe this tripe?
If they feel excluded from the national mood, it’s because their attitudes are so completely at odds with the rest of us. They believe that a gigantic, nationwide, conspiracy “relegated” them out of hatred and that the people involved in it still run things at every level of government and football. They think every negative headline proves the media is against them. They believe that every sending off proves that the referees are out for their blood.
And they believe the Tartan Army hates them although it has made Allan McGregor feel welcome in spite of past sins and it regards Ryan Jack as an essential cog in the wheel. The joker writing for The Record today freely admits that even Celtic fans have been complimentary towards Jack and praised his good performance for Scotland … but then he rants about how the backlash against a footballer who doesn’t even play for them is proof that their club is despised.
The guy he’s talking about, of course, is Oli McBurnie, and this proves exactly what I’ve been writing about him for weeks; he is only tolerated by the media because he never stops talking about the club from Ibrox. It’s like a PR campaign and this is the latest instalment.
The writer claims that it took Leigh Griffiths ten games to score for Scotland, and he wasn’t getting a hard time throughout. I beg to differ.
I remember exactly how much stick Griffiths took, and the one reason he got the time at all was that he was scoring regularly for Celtic the whole way through that period and it was obvious that the goals were eventually going to come.
McBurnie has played 15 times for Scotland without scoring. He is 24; this isn’t a kid anymore. He has a mere 50 goals in club football in his career so far … Griffiths has 118 for Celtic alone, and 230 in his career to date. There is no comparison between these two.
A non-starting Leigh Griffiths has three goals already this season furthermore, which is what got him back in the team in the first place. McBurnie has played 48 times for Sheffield United and scored six. None of them have come in this campaign.
This is a guy who hasn’t scored in months. His last goal was in July.
Other than his simply not being up to the job, is there any other reason Scotland fans could have for not wanting McBurnie in the team?
Well, actually, yes there is … how about the social media video of him which emerged last year, where he was caught telling John Fleck he didn’t even want called up to the Scotland squad?
Or his withdrawal before another fixture citing an injury … which didn’t stop him turning out for his club just days later?
So aside from questions as to his ability, there are also questions as to his commitment … in short, there are plenty of good reasons why there is an element of the Scotland support which doesn’t want him near the team. None of it has to do with his club preference.
Kenny McLean is a die-hard Ibrox fan, who came through their youth system. It is the toughest area of the Scotland team to get into, but most of the Tartan Army think he’s there on merit and would probably start him over Stuart Armstrong.
None of this appears to have dawned on this idiot, or the paper which allowed him to write such paranoid bullshit.
It really begs the question as to when – or if – these people ever stop indulging these feelings of permanent victimhood. This is the support that used to sing “no-one likes us, we don’t care” and now all they do is bloody well moan about it.
Honestly, if they want to feel welcome in Scottish football again they really need to stop acting like spoiled children and re-join it in a meaningful way. This kind of self-indulgence and self-pity doesn’t help them. It’s craziness and its time they snapped out of it.
Please read our article on our new Facebook strategy, and bookmark the sites mentioned in it.