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Ibrox’s Media Strategy Is Clearly Designed To Hide Something Big.

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Today, someone sent me the Steven Gerrard press conference from this morning and asked me to listen to it. Remarkable.

It lasted a mere six and a half minutes.

Not one hard question was asked to him. The media is largely absent from these, leaving a handful of desperate outlets and a handful of fan reps. To call it pathetic is to make it sound better than it was.

There were no questions about Lundstram’s disastrous start.

There were no questions on Ryan Kent’s total lack of effort.

Nobody asked about Goldson’s contract.

There wasn’t even a question asking for an explanation as to that bizarre wrong strip Kent had on.

It was one of the most sanitised and soft pressers I’ve ever seen.

Can it really be that this is the extent of scrutiny that club wants?

For the manager to answer softball questions every week?

Is this really what the Ibrox support wants?

Who is in that room to put that man under pressure when results aren’t going their way?

Celtic pressers with Ange last twice as long.

I am quite hopeful that sooner or later they will last longer because fan outlets will be allowed at them.

Ange’s last press conference lasted 15 minutes.

When it was done, Ralston did eight minutes with the media.

Gerrard is getting a free ride, and that’s deliberate.

The club imposed a condition on the press that the vast majority of them simply refused to accept, and their media department had counted on that. The club does not want this guy near a media which will put him under pressure.

You have to wonder why. You have to wonder what is going on over there.

Let’s be honest, their press policy does not make sense in any conventional way.

Asking the media to pay to attend is a tactic designed to force people out of the room.

Even a club in the direst trouble, battling relegation, mired in controversy, doesn’t do that.

At their worst in the early Banter Years, Ibrox would have Traynor or some other pit-bull on hand to steer the questioning for those cowardly enough to accept that, but the club never did anything like this.

I have looked hard at this, and I cannot find a single other organisation anywhere that has ever tried to charge the media to attend weekly press events.

It is counter-productive.

It makes no sense to do it.

The press provides free publicity.

It also provides a useful check when things are going wrong.

This is not rational except in one instance; you anticipate adverse questions and you are determined to avoid getting them.

This much is obvious. But not the timing.

Remember, this was instigated before a ball was even kicked this season, so this isn’t a response to bad results or negative developments on the pitch.

There is obviously something enormous behind this, something damaging, but anticipated beforehand, something they know is wrong and can’t be fixed … and they want to prevent being questioned on it.

You are free, as we all are, to speculate on what that might be, but what we cannot be in any doubt about is that it is real.

You can see it in the attitude of the players, in Gerrard’s own demeanour, in the laxity at the heart of the whole operation over there.

And the media itself is on the hunt, of course.

The Record went on the attack over the weekend and other outlets are poking around. They all know that this isn’t normal behaviour, that something big is driving all this. Will they get to the bottom of it?

I don’t think it matters.

If it’s sufficiently serious, it will out soon enough, one way or another, either in an explosive event or series of them or in results on the pitch. They foolishly believe that you can hide a crisis. Many have tried before them.

But eventually it overwhelms everything you do to keep it under wraps.

So it shall be here.

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