There are a lot of stories at the moment which beep on the radar and then disappear, and sometimes I plan to write about them and then forget to. This is one of the ones that almost got away from me this week, but I was reminded of it yesterday by a friend of mine and so I knew that I would have to come back to it, and I did so gratefully.
On Monday, The Sun ran one of the more ridiculous pieces to follow our cup final win. Obviously, they needed a little bit of feel-good for the Ibrox support, who might have been feeling a little bit flat as a consequence of our victory.
Fortunately, they were on hand with one of the daftest stories of the year. I doubt it cheered up a single Ibrox fan.
Their story was about how they would be “seeded” higher than Celtic in the event that they make it through two qualifying rounds and reach the Champions League with us.
What a straw to clutch to.
For openers, it’s a very big If and there aren’t a lot of Ibrox supporters who believe that it will ever come to pass, because the path is not as straightforward and easy as it looks, especially not in a year when a squad rebuild will be taking place and there will be very little time either to get it done or to get what players they do sign bedded into the team.
Secondly, does the writer of that piece, or any of the others who have trotted out this guff, even know how the new Champions League format works? The pot you wind up in makes virtually no difference this time around; every team gets two teams from each pot, so even if Ibrox make it to Pot 2, so what? They will still get two Pot 1 teams, they will still get two Pot 2 sides, two from Pot 3 and two from Pot 4. That’s the format, that’s how it works.
If they make it through two qualifying rounds they will get their hands on Champions League money. In doing so they will take a chunk of money from our national TV pool share. So we have good reasons for not wanting to see them go through, and I will be cheering on whoever their opponents are in the qualifying rounds.
But in terms of an easier draw in the competition itself, that’s nonsensical and only a moronic sports writer would have written something so daft, and only on a day when they were so desperate for a positive Ibrox story would an editorial department have approved it for publication. This is our media though, writing nonsense day after day after day, and much of it to fulfil no other function than to cheer up our friends across the city.
It is desperate, desperate stuff.
As the joint most successful team in Europe, the huns should understandably be very proud of themselves and, based on that, they most certainly deserve a lofty seeded position. LOL
They were the peepul!
It is not only to cheer “our friends” across the city, it is to cheer themselves too. They are
depraved bigots of the highest order and it helps them to gain a little comfort when they see it
down in writing, even though they themselves have written it and know it is nonsense. I blame
their equally bigoted parents for battering the hatred into them.
They’ve NAE CHANCE ae getting thru! They’ll have a DOWNGRADED Keeper, TavPen & the Turkish Midget will still play wae Soapy & Balahun as the CH’s! EVERY club in the Qualifying will be dying tae draw them as its a bye thru tae the Group Stages lol!