Seeing The Ibrox Club Held Up As Defenders Of Virtue Is Nauseating, Even In Context.

I never cease to be amazed, and horrified, at the way some people have of shutting out unpleasant facts and allowing themselves to talk the most obvious rubbish as a consequence.

Today one of the stories doing the rounds is about how the Ibrox club are heroes because they have stood up for Thistle’s young female goalkeeper in light of the attacks on her from one Joey Barton.

Ibrox’s own press release on it was meant to make them sound progressive. The tone was suitably grave and serious. This did not read like a Statement O’Clock missive, but something that was supposed to strike the right note and tone.

“(This club) has been made aware of discriminatory and misogynistic comments regarding the women’s game following Sunday’s Sky Sports Cup Final. As a club, we stand together against these homophobic and disgraceful slurs in the strongest possible terms. We are unwavering in our desire to further the women’s game across the country which goes from strength to strength and will support all players in challenging those who hold extremely outdated and foul views of women’s football.”

That statement was certainly not intended to draw derision and laughter.

Because, after all, everything in there is right on the nose. Barton’s comments were a disgrace. He showed himself up, yet again, as nothing but a moronic boot-boy who thinks he’s an intellectual because he’s read a couple of books and knows how to find BrainyQuote on Google.

Yet derision is what I feel reading it, and if I laugh then it’s because I find it all a bit hard to take seriously.

Because you’ll notice that nowhere in that statement did they use his name, and that wasn’t about not giving him publicity, it was about keeping them out of the story. Because Barton has been a nasty little toe-rag and all-round gutter dweller for years … and they signed him anyway. They signed him with his history of violence, his reputation for the very sorts of comments that he’s made here, they signed him and didn’t give a toss about any of that.

I love how they can present themselves as defenders of virtue and of women when they were the club which signed Jon Flanagan after he’d booted his girlfriend all over the street whilst he was still a Liverpool player, the act which resulted in their tearing up his contract, which enabled him to sign for the Ibrox club in the first place.

They were the only club on this island who wanted anything to do with him; he finished his career in Belgium at 29.

That signing wasn’t 100 years ago; it was five years ago. That was the year their women’s team took its first major step towards going professional. I wonder how many of their players the club bothered to consult before it brought him into the fold?

When they released their Christmas advert at the end of last year, who should have popped up in it but Paul Gascoigne?

Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t he not just a high-profile woman beater but a guy with a conviction for harassing another? And whilst we’re on the subject, isn’t he also a convicted racist as well, after heaping abuse on – wait for it – his own bodyguard? He was cleared of sexual assault in 2019 after an incident on a train; so, he didn’t do that, but he did disparagingly refer to her several times as “a fat lass” … but he’s an Ibrox hero.

And really, they are condemning an online troll for saying some stuff about a young woman, and yet no comment on the behaviour of thousands of their own fans who chanted about wanting to see an injured player die in a match which happened weeks ago?

What are they waiting for before they do that? What’s it going to take before they address the issues inside their own house?

Barton’s comments are disgusting, and I am glad that he’s been excoriated for them but my mind literally reels at seeing the Ibrox operation hailed as progressive when their fans are up to their knees in fenian blood every week without them uttering a word about it.