No, Freddy The Ned, It’s Celtic Who Are “Champions” Not Your Club.

There seem to be a lot of people at Ibrox determined to re-invent the Scottish Cup.

They released a t-shirt the other day calling themselves “Scottish Cup Champions”, a phrase I’ve never heard before. Scottish Cup winners, yes, but champions?

Several of their players have repeated the same message.

The latest of them is Morelos, who posted a picture of himself with the trophy he didn’t play any real part in winning with some Spanish underneath it. But prominent is the word “champions”.

He didn’t even bother to mention that it was not the domestic league prize that he was holding in the picture. It’s as if Ibrox just wants to be associated with that word, even though it’s usually reserved for those who actually win the title.

It’s a little desperate, don’t you think?

It’s a little like the way they clung onto the Old Firm thing; all it serves to do is have people remind them that in fact they are living in the past and hanging on too tight to days gone by.

The number of their players who have used this word – and that it appears on official merchandise – shows that the instruction to do so comes from the top of the house.

And that’s just bizarre, isn’t it?

Do their fans think this is a great idea, or are they embarrassed by it as they were by the Old Firm thing? As they have been by other pronouncements out of the club’s PR department lately?

There are people inside Ibrox who have definitely lost touch with reality, but this is hardly unusual for that place. It’s this new tendency they have to hang onto the bottom rung that is new, and hilarious for the rest of us.

No, Fred The Ned, your team are not champions. That would be Celtic.

You don’t get to abuse that word or to change the meaning of it, even if your club’s merchandising arm thinks it has a way of cashing in.