Ibrox Is In A War With Scottish Football That They Must Not Be Allowed To Win.

The last week has been silent, or at least on the surface of it. But deep down, below the radar, in the backrooms and in the meetings, the work goes on. Ibrox continues to wage war on the rest of Scottish football. They do so relentlessly, without letting up.

Scottish football is a big place.

The community encompasses clubs, governing bodies, the media, the fans, the fan media, the sponsors and the officials.

I have seen clubs at war with one of these groups, maybe with two, but this is the first time in my living memory that one club has been in a multi-front war with most, or all of them, at the same time.

What is it that Ibrox wants? What is the objective? They have taken so many shots at different groups and organisations that it makes you wonder what the endgame could possibly be. Power, for sure, and influence for themselves, but is that all?

Power can be won in different ways. Influence can be gained more easily doing favours than enacting vendettas.

The best way to influence people is to become their friends; Dale Carnegie’s book on that has been required reading in business schools the world over since it was published in 1939. Surely to God their directors have read it?

Some of these debates appear to have no clear origin or purpose, but look a little closer and you can maybe see what some of the plans are. Many of them, to be fair, seem utterly insane even when you think you have a clear understanding of what’s behind them.

The cinch argument, for example, seems directed partly at bringing down Neil Doncaster and other SPFL executive members – who their club thinks are pro-Celtic, and which has been a long-term goal of theirs – and partly aimed at damaging the rest of the clubs, some of whom their demented directors blame for their “relegation”.

That allegedly serious people have not only bought into their own fairytale but all the implications of it, although they know its manifestly false, is incredible to me.

That they are willing to drag sponsors into their vendetta shows how over the top and ridiculous it’s all got over there. This is a scorched earth tactic and they appear not to care that it will have dire consequences for the whole game … themselves included.

The war on the media was not exactly a shock, but their tactics in it were.

To demand money from the press for covering your organisation?

What kind of lunatics would do something like that?

Except maybe for those who fear the media and want to hold them at arms-length; this, oddly, includes their own fans who they have charged the same as the mainstream press. Money is tight over there, but this can’t have raised more than a couple of hundred grand.

Denying away fans tickets for their own ground is understandable; this is about catering to their own worst elements and trying for every pitiful advantage they can get. The picture is slightly confused because our own club has done the same … partly down to them and partly down to regulations which have since been rescinded.

Celtic has largely stayed out of this morass, but we are targeted as well of course, as was the case when the ticket situation first arose.

They are willing to do anything to gain even a fraction of an advantage; I sometimes wish we were as ruthless.

What’s unbelievable about all of this is that the governing bodies still pretend that Ibrox’s board are honest brokers and the sort of club we should be trusting at the top of the game. Stewart Robertson has been at the heart of much of this, as he was last summer when the club tried to oust the entire upper echelon of the SPFL over the Dundee vote.

They should have tackled him, and his club, at the time and then maybe the league sponsors would not be wrapped up in a court case with Ibrox which threatens the whole deal.

None of this is really surprising; their board openly boasted at the start of the season about how they intended to “settle scores on and off the pitch” and they’ve been true to that if to nothing else. They have battled everyone, and they still are.

Whatever the endgame is, it is clear that their club does not mean the rest of the game well.

It is clear that they are intent on harming other clubs, targeting journalists and bringing down the entire top structure of the league and the SFA.

Their methods are not gentle and their objectives are not benign.

We must be alert for whatever it is that they are up to. They cannot be allowed to win.