BBC Sport Scotland: A Retirement Home For Ex-Ibrox Employees.

The news today that Sportscene is to be hosted tonight by two ex-Ibrox players is not in the least bit surprising any more than Livingston’s early collapse against the current club that plays there is. You could have set your watch to both of them.

The BBC has taken Michael Stewart off their flagship Scottish sports show and they’ve done that for only one reason; as part of the continuing appeasement policy they have towards the club that plays out of that stadium on the south side.

It hasn’t worked. McLaughlin remains banned and the standoff continues, but this isn’t because the Corporation hasn’t kissed enough fat sweaty Sevco arse, because if they did any more of it every single person at Pacific Quay would have swollen lips.

Tonight’s “panel” is absurdly bad; Kenny Miller and Ricky Foster, which sums up the utter contempt they have for any neutrals in their audience. Those who will pipe up “Miller played for Celtic” can just shut it. He has played three times for Ibrox clubs, so it’s fair to say what his first loves are; Rangers and Sevco. This panel is laughably one-sided.

It’s not even this one panel, of course. It’s the whole way Stewart has been side-lined.

It’s the way that, as Joe McHugh brilliantly put it today, “an EBT rather than an equity card is the key to a gig on Sportscene.”

t’s the way in which BBC Sport Scotland seems to play a dual role in the sport; acting as a so-called “unbiased commentator” even as it doubles as a retirement home for ex-Ibrox players who can’t get a gig anywhere else.

The pattern is all too familiar to us, and that we are expected to swallow that pathetic line-up tonight tells you all you need to know. It would be different if these people were even intelligent and capable of analysis, but if you’ve ever heard either of them get interviewed you’ll know we’re not talking here about people who are going to pass their NASA entrance exam.

That’s another BBC Sport Scotland trait; dumbing down. But then, when it’s the Sevco audience you’re trying to attract the only way to go isn’t exactly up.