When managers have to defend the indefensible, they often sound as if they have taken leave of their senses and left reality far behind them. I’ve heard so many bosses over the years try to explain away decisions which leave all around them reeling.
Football is a game which reveals the nature of people almost better than anything.
Because it’s a zero sum pursuit, because it’s mainly about winning, and some people are willing to go much, much further than others in order to accomplish their goals.
Over time you come to understand why certain people end up at certain clubs, and truly the marriage of Steven Gerrard and Ibrox is one made in heaven, because he is aloof and arrogant in the way that everything over there is.
He also shows a remarkable ability to detach himself from reality and embrace the most moronic arguments and ideas.
I don’t think there’s anybody with a fraction of intelligence who won’t be amazed by his bizarre excuse for why his demented club has appealed the wholly justified bans the SFA handed out for their players last week.
I think it shows utter contempt for all of us, and yet there is a cadre in our media who lapped this nonsense up, starting with Ibrox’s pet hack Chris Jack.
I think it’s incredible that there are people in our press corps who would pretend to believe Gerrard’s pitiful excuse is something other than outrageous. It is abhorrent for our media to lend credibility to this kind of immoral justification.
Our players are too good to suspend?
Our player’s careers are harmed by being banned?
Are we really supposed to accept that? Is this really the logic of Ibrox, and is our media really going to write that up without comment as if what he’s saying is okay?
When do these people get tired of Ibrox’s hand up their arse?
There used to be an SFA charge for clubs which bring vexatious and frivolous appeals, appeals designed to delay bans and game the system.
Whatever happened to that charge? If there was ever a case which deserved it, it is this one, with its complete absence of logic.
This is not an appeal based on some procedural mistake or technical issue or point of law; it’s based on Ibrox’s need to have its footballers available to play Scottish Cup ties.
The idea that it will damage careers is manifestly nonsensical and so is the idea that players should be spared punishment because they are too good for it.
This is an outrageous appeal based on pretexts which aren’t even flimsy but non-existent. Gerrard’s assertion that Patterson is some kind of wonderkid is also pathetic.
Even accounting for the sort of hyperbole necessary to sustain his preposterous central premise, it is laughably OTT and exaggerated. Once again, though, the press basically accepts it without subjecting it to scrutiny.
It is shameful how subservient they are.
This appeal has got no chance whatsoever of proving successful and nor should it, but that isn’t the point.
Forget even the debased nature of a club even daring to appeal a ban for a flagrant violation of health regulations; these justifications are offensive in their own right because they don’t even hide their contempt for the rest of us.
For the media to ignore that shames them as much as the club ought to be shamed.
It’s the absence of that sort of response that inspires Ibrox to think it pull this kind of stuff in the first place.