As Celtic Close In, The Ibrox Club Ramps Up The Pressure On The Refs.

When Ibrox’s new golden boy rolled into town on a wave of fan euphoria, his early matches were characterised by such a sequence of “honest mistakes” to his advantage that even our desperately cowardly media had to sit up and take notice.

Their run of games without conceding an SPFL penalty was reaching the point of ludicrousness where suddenly even mainstream outlets were forced to speculate on it. At that time, he couldn’t praise refs enough.

Those of us who’ve been here and seen it and heard it all before from Ibrox bosses knew that wasn’t going to last, and as I wrote earlier in the week he was demanding protection for his players due to an injury picked up by Todd Cantwell, and now today he’s saying he’s not yet demanded a meeting with officials because of the too heavy fixture schedule.

Ibrox is now very clearly pressuring officials, or trying to. Just in time for the run-in where Steve Conroy has already been in the papers saying that he fears it will be refs who decide the destination of the title race. Can you even imagine the outcry?

But this guy is determined that if it happens it’ll fall in his team’s favour.

For the second time in a week, he’s made highly inflammatory statements about officials, and he continues to pretend that he’s only half serious and the media which loves this joker is lapping it up.

The first time Rodgers utters a negative word about officials you wait to see the difference in the reaction that gets. If Celtic had demanded a ref not get their games, we’d still be hearing about it.

There is nothing coded or subtle here.

This isn’t being conducted from the shadows with un-named people briefing fan media knuckle-draggers this time; this is the Ibrox boss himself demanding answers he knows to questions he’s already asked … and coming days after he said that his players need to be protected more out on the pitch.

Even the likes of Keith Jackson should be able to recognise that for what it is, and if refs and officials feel undermined by this sort of talk that’s because they are.

Ask Willie Collum, who hasn’t had an SPFL game against them since they demanded he never get another one. All the SFA’s talk about how clubs don’t get to pick their refs will be hollow until he does.

In the meantime, the manager across the city runs off his mouth. Don’t count on the officials doing anything to shut him up either, he’s the media favourite, the man of the hour, and the day they tell him to clamp it will be a cold one in Hell, even if they all know they should.