Ibrox Tries To Misdirect Its Fans With Fanciful Plan To Take The Fight To Celtic.

Ibrox is really good at misdirection. Or they have traditionally be good at it. But their strategy is so obvious now that most people can spot it a mile away, even when it is being pushed by the media. In their match program at the weekend James Bisgrove was banging the drum about stadium expansion again and said he’d have information on it “soon.”

So however many of them who were at the game knew this already, because there it was, and it’s not a promise just a vague musing which might be forgotten in a week. So how did that small titbit of information end up spread across much of the mainstream press today? Easy. A strategic leak to them, pointing out the segment and encouraging them to write about it.

And like fools, our media performed their function as per.

The thing is, the fans over there saw right through that, an effort at releasing the squirrels after an unsatisfactory performance as the weekend, resulting in a lot of grumbling in the stands.

The board reckoned that a story saying they were going to challenge Celtic’s larger stadium – a point of envy and anger since we completed our ground – would go down a storm, but their fans are now inured to this kind of thing and many of them half expected it.

This is just another of those things with them, just another area where the best they can do is play catch up.

They know we could, if we were so inclined, schedule some development work of our own if that’s what we thought we had to do, and move ahead of them again. They have looked at various proposals for upping the capacity at Ibrox and few have any future.

Their fans have suggested that spending the money on better players or a better management team would be a smarter strategy, and between that and the costs – which are huge – this idea will come to fruition only when Hell freezes over and even their fans know it.

So it was a nice try and all that, but their supporters are not in the least bit impressed by this and have made that clear on the forums. They see it for what it is; a little “jam tomorrow” promise at a tough time and they simply are not buying it.

I have finished a major piece on their fans and the relationship with their board which I’ll put up sometime tomorrow but that is a relationship like the one with the manager that might very soon be beyond repair, and the longer it takes for them to sack The Mooch the more apparent that will be.

Celtic Park earns us millions every year above and beyond what they can.

That structural advantage is one of the reasons we’re on top. If they were serious about closing that gap they’d forgo transfer spending and just do it, in the long term interests of the club.

Their fans will never accept it, and that’s why, when it comes down to it, that day won’t ever come.

That club is a mess. This is one of the many reasons why.