Why Did The BBC Allow The Mooch To Lie To Them In His “Big Interview”?

Listen, I know I write here that standards in our media have fallen, but the BBC is supposed to be where the best and the brightest go. It’s supposed to be where people are not allowed to lie and where those who do are defeated by determined interrogators.

I think that for the BBC to do a special interview with one manager before a cup final and not the other shows an incredible degree of favouritism. But far worse is when that manager is allowed to peddle blatant untruths which nobody in the Corporation challenges.

This is not what I pay my license fee for.

All that interview is when you strip it back is pro-Ibrox propaganda spouted on the club’s behalf by someone who either doesn’t know the full facts or someone who just doesn’t care about them and either way if he was in any other industry he would never have been allowed to get away with it.

In fact, if he’d been at any other club he wouldn’t have been allowed to get away with it.

“There has been a time here where the recruitment has been essential for the rebuild of Rangers to win the title and get to Europa League finals and win a Scottish Cup. We have not been able to splash the cash if you like. So I think there is an element of coaching and development. Having money doesn’t mean you are going to make good decisions. The players you bring in have to be aligned and the coaching has to be aligned as well … Moving forward it is important we recruit the right players regardless of cost. Celtic have done a good job of that in the last 12 months and I remember a time coming to Scotland where it was said Rangers need to spend £100million to catch up. Well they didn’t and they caught up.”

Let’s take that wall of horse manure apart brick by brick, shall we?

The idea that they have “not been able to splash the cash” is ridiculous and a brazen lie which this website has explored in detail in a previous piece. The Gerrard management team spent £27 million net over the course of his time there, in a mere three years, and got their solitary league to show for it. In the meantime, we were in surplus – transfer spending surplus – of more than £30 million at the same time, up to Ange’s first transfer window.

“It is important we replace the right players regardless of cost,” is absolute fantasy-land stuff which their board will not appreciate hearing at all and is setting him up for one almighty and calamitous battle with them over a very short span of time.

The idea that this is what Celtic have done – signed players regardless of cost – is incredibly wrong on every count. Does he really believe that? Does he not understand where we play football here and what the financial issues are?

Our manager gets a budget. It’s up to him how he spends it. The signings of Carter Vickers and Jota were £12 million he didn’t get to spend on players who added to the squad but that was the decision Ange made.

And Ange was right to make it.

But all that was factored in, costed, budgeted for.

For him not to know that, or to look across here at us spending and think we’re reckless or careless … where does he think the vast profit we just posted for the first half of the year came from if we’re just throwing it around like confetti?

“(The club) prior to that did an unbelievable job to build a squad on a short amount of money to close a really big gap,” he said about their own club. Only at Ibrox could a £27 million splurge be regarded as ‘a short amount of money’ because it’s far from it.

And the final piece of this utter garbage.

“I remember a time coming to Scotland where it was said (Ibrox) need to spend £100million to catch up. Well they didn’t and they caught up.”

First, I don’t recall anyone saying any such thing and it would be ridiculous if anyone did. But maybe he hasn’t done his history homework so let me give him a hand.

When they were in the Third Division they had an opportunity to grow organically, to spend money well and come up through the ranks transformed from one depending on hand-outs.

But the fact is that they didn’t do this.

They spent a fortune “on the journey” above and beyond anything that they earned. How much money?

Directors at one point were owed the mind-bending sum of £70 million from that period. They did, in fact, spend £100 million above and beyond earnings …. so that entire section of his statement is contradicted by the facts.

The facts. Which the BBC should have been on hand with. Even reading that the facts clanged in my head the whole time. The national broadcaster basically allowed him to lie.

There’s no other word for it. He got up there and he fed them a banquet of bullshit.

And they passed it on to their audience.

Shame on them.