Ibrox Midfielder Has Had His Paranoia Stoked, And A Scotsman Hack Is Happy To Help.

The headline above Graeme McPherson’s recent article in the Scotsman is despicable.

Despicable.

I understand that the article writer doesn’t write the headline (although I’ve been all of mine for years and would never let anyone dictate that to me) but reading the piece itself, there’s not much in it to suggest that he disagrees with the sentiment of it.

“Nicolas Raskin already has the Rangers haters figured out – ‘not so many teams love us’” it shrieks.

The “Rangers haters”?

That could have come right out of one of their nuttier forums. If one of their blogs had written that mainstream writers would have rolled their eyes in despair. Who rolls their eyes for it appearing in a national title?

Raskin has been at Ibrox five minutes.

But the maddest people in that club have already gotten into his head. “I had heard that they don’t like us … all the teams that play (us) try to give their best and they try to beat us. I have the feeling there are not so many teams that love us.”

Fast work on behalf of whoever it is inside that club who feels it is his bounden duty to stoke the paranoia for everyone who comes to work there. Remember Gerrard, with zero experience of Scottish football at all, saying after his first game that he felt that the club had been prejudiced against by the authorities for years?

I mean, it’s pretty clear that the moment someone walks through those doors they are immediately submerged in the madness.

When Ange Postecoglu spoke first to the Celtic fan media, the first question, from the Celtic Star guys, was framed as a warning to him to remember that his only real friends were in that room.

The mainstream press went to town on Dave for saying that … but they do much worse than that every single day of the week, and this is a case in point.

“Raskin has only been in Scotland for three months but has already shrewdly figured out that (his club) aren’t welcomed with red carpets and rose petals every time they pitch up for an away game,” writes McPherson.

Perhaps the reason Raskin is already talking like a ‘no-one likes us we don’t care’ nutjob is that the media seems to enjoy pushing the same line.

When a national title is referring to other clubs as “Rangers haters” and people inside the walls are filling this guy’s head with the worst kind of nonsense, can you blame him for talking this way?

Can you actually hold it against him?

I have to say no, because as much as I find that attitude appalling and even dangerous it’s being stoked by people in alleged positions of responsibility, and I hold them more accountable for that than him.

This is because the Ibrox club is playing Aberdeen next weekend at Pittodrie, and that’s a fixture that smoulders enough that it doesn’t need fuel poured onto the flames.

But look! We’re off to the races!

It’s not enough that someone inside the club has got this guy believing that the Grand Conspiracy of The Unseen Hand exists … but the Scotsman’s writer helpfully agrees.

That club’s problems don’t just come from the inside … there are so many flagrantly irresponsible people in our media who stoke the fire whenever they can and who have fed the Victim Lie until the smoke and flames billow over our whole game.

Sooner or later that’s going to do some real, heavy duty, serious damage.