Last night, as we were preparing for the New Year, a story broke in one of the Scottish papers – The Evening Times – about the impending departures of two of Ibrox’s players, Glen Kamara and Nathan Patterson. They were, the report said, going to Everton and the move would be rubber stamped and finalised within 48 hours.
The fee was £20 million. Not for each of them, but for the pair.
The story was based on a tweet from a “journalist” who’s brief bio said he worked at an English based newspaper and The Scotsman. That should have been the first hint that all was not as it seemed. Still, one idiot journalist swallowed this nonsense whole, his newspaper put the story up and then pulled it less than a half hour later when the truth dawned that he had been as duped as the mass of Sevco fans who reacted to the story in outrage.
Two things amused me about the whole affair; firstly, how easy it was to rope a mainstream hack up here into writing garbage, and secondly the reaction of the Ibrox fans, first to the story itself and secondly to the obvious trolling of the guy responsible for it.
The disbelief at the fees was matched by my own; to me, it was the surest sign that the story was someone having a laugh. Ibrox’s fans thought it was too low. I thought Everton paying an eight figure fee for either player was preposterously high.
When asked to “justify” the size of the fee, the troll told the Ibrox fans that their club had “liquidity” issues and needed to sell; this prompted even greater fury from them. And I was baffled as to why that was the case.
Because it’s a fact, and everyone knows that it’s fact. Yet apparently, the words of an Ibrox director, at the recent AGM, that the club had “no need to sell” has erased all the concerns that their supporters might have had.
I was amazed at that, although I shouldn’t be. Their gullibility has been revealed time and time again, after all, but the stakes are so high here in the aftermath of those disastrous losses last year that I am amazed anyone could believe glib assurances from the boardroom that everything was actually okay. If this was going on at Celtic, we know the directors would have to do better than that. The media would be all over the story for starters.
One demented fan demanded to know if the board had lied to the supporters.
I felt like Tweeting back to that guy the answer which was obvious to every Celtic fan following the debate.
“Duh! Of course they did! How stupid that you even need to ask!”
Even if they don’t take our word for it, they should have been listening to their new manager, who seemed to pretty clearly understand that he wasn’t bringing anyone in unless players went out, and who has been talking for the last week about “the plan” for losing folk.
It’s incredible just how little they understand about the people running their own club.
It is amazing how little they question what they hear from them. Successive boards have lied to them time and time and time and time again, and you’d think they’d get sick of that and wise up, but all that ever happens is that some new bunch of charlatans comes along and tells them what they want to hear rather than what they need to know.
And so the year ended as it basically went all the way through; with the media believing and writing nonsense and the Ibrox fans embracing delusions and lies.
Only Celtic fans question everything. Only we hold our club to account because we care.
That hasn’t changed either. And it won’t.