Souness’s Queen’s Portrait Story Is The Tale Of A Backwards Club And A Backwards Culture.

Who exactly is the story Graeme Souness has been telling today, about how it was him who decided that the Queen’s portrait should hang in the dressing room at Ibrox, meant to impress?

Is he supposed to come over as staunch?

Is it supposed to be a mark of respect to the woman herself?

His contention that they ought to have it as a “Protestant institution” actually runs counter to the things he did there as manager and which once brought him credit.

This brainless waffling should have people concerned about him, coming as it does on the heels of his rant about women in the game. He’s starting to sound like Alf Garnett.

I don’t know who he thinks this brings credit to.

Not to him, for sure.

Certainly not to the club he was once the manager of.

This whole “Protestant institution” thing just makes Ibrox sound like a place for backward thinking bigots, and although most of us understand that this is exactly what the two Ibrox operations are, and have been, it’s not the impression they want to give to the rest of the world.

All the last few days has done is remind everyone else in this country, and beyond, that there is a spectacularly misplaced egotism and arrogance and exceptionalism about that club.

They think they are special, They believe they hold a special place in the fabric of this nation, but they ignore what happened when the club Souness once managed fell into trouble.

Not one of the “institutions” they had relied on and expected to come to their aid did so.

When you’re actually ripping one of them off why should they?

But that should have been their lesson that even the culture they cling to doesn’t have a minute for them when real world consequences are in play. Nobody came to their aid for precisely this reason, this “Protestant culture” garbage the NewCo couldn’t wait to appropriate and has spent the last few days wallowing in.

Souness sounded like an eejit.

He made the club sound as retrograde and reactionary and prejudiced as well all know that it was, and as we all know the NewCo is.

We, not they, should be thanking him for it.

Because the more the world focusses on what they’re about the deeper the understanding is of just how unlike them we actually are.