If you saw The Sunday Mail today, you’ll have noticed that something odd took place; they offered criticism of Ibrox for once. And not just in one article but in a few of them. There was one blaming Gerrard for the defeat in midweek, another about their honking transfer record and a third about their stand-off with the SPFL over cinch.
That article might have been the most interesting of the three. It quoted an unnamed “experienced senior director” at a top flight club, and it stated that Ibrox has to deliver proof of every single charge it has made against Doncaster and the SPFL over that affair.
They must produce a signed contract. They must produce the communications which show that the SPFL knew that document existed. They must be able to demonstrate that they told Doncaster they could not comply with the deal before the deal was signed.
It’s a high bar they’ve been set, and I don’t believe – and the unnamed director doesn’t appear to believe – that they can get over it. One of the things he brings up is the dichotomy in having an ironclad “conflict of interest” when the league was previously sponsored by Ladbrokes and the Ibrox club has a betting firm on its jersey. No conflict there?
Crucially, the director also mentions Ibrox’s behaviour last summer, when they made all sorts of baseless allegations and then couldn’t prove a single one of them. It is clear that there is little tolerance for their brand of nonsense this time around.
What makes this particularly interesting is that The Sunday Mail makes no effort to balance this with any countermanding statement from the Ibrox club. It simply offers the views of the director and lays out the criteria they have to satisfy before people will be convinced.
The overall impression you get reading it is that the rest of the clubs are pissed off with them. That The Sunday Mail is reporting it shows you how pissed off they are.
On top of that, you have Gerrard getting flayed by Keevins, as much as this eejit is capable of flaying somebody anyway. One of his assertions is particularly amusing; that Gerrard is “again” the manager whose won one trophy out of nine.
I’m just not sure what he means by “again” since that’s clearly what Gerrard has been since he secured the title, with the cups already out of his reach.
Still, the article doesn’t spare him the kind of scrutiny that record deserves. It’s the first time he’s been properly put under the microscope in a while.
The third piece lays out the failures in their transfer policy, and it’s basically slagging them for putting too high a value on their dreck, which is a theme this site returns to over and over again. They simply aren’t seen as credible in that arena and the news today that Katic isn’t for budging is devastating to them as he was someone they thought they could move on.
These three articles, coming on the same day, have followed on from several different pieces from across Scottish sports journalism in the last few weeks. The results the club has had lately are part of it, sure, but there’s something else here; the predictable backlash from a media which finds itself on the outside, because most of them won’t pay the £25,000 rate.
It’s extortion, and they know it and they have enough professional pride not to want to bend to it. I commend them for that if not for much else and for being angry about it.
This is Ibrox at its best; completely misjudging the lay of the land. They actually believed that locking the press out of their media conferences would prevent scrutiny? All it does is give every hack and every title which feels disenfranchised the motivation to kick the shit out of you, and some of them are going to line up to do it every chance they get.
As I said in a piece last week, do not underestimate the level of hostility towards them which exists in Scottish football at the present time. There are people who can’t stand them because those people are us. There are people who can’t stand them because they are them. There are people who can’t stand them for their arrogance. Others for their recklessness. There are folk sick of their moaning and their sense of victimhood and grievance.
If the Ibrox club were represented by a single individual and that individual was murdered, the police would have a list of suspects thicker than the Tokyo telephone book. This is a good time for our club to be trying to make friends.