Lundstram’s Video Goodbye To The Ibrox Fans Reveals The Depth Of That Club’s Issues.

I remember reading The Secret Footballer books some years back, in amazement at some of the revelations in them.

One of the craziest was the one about the Sunderland player Adam Johnson’s criminal conviction for underage sex with a 15-year-old girl.

I am paraphrasing here, but the author said that had someone told him the geographical area in which the offences took place he would have guessed the club right off the bat but that there would have been great difficulties in narrowing it down to a specific player as there were a whole bunch of them in the dressing room there who were more than capable of being involved in such an affair.

His most scathing comment was that the club had developed a culture around it which was toxic and unhealthy, an attitude he described as resembling “a permanent stag-do.” There are detectable hints of that in the first season of Sunderland Till I Die, where the strong impression is of a situation where few players are interested in the club itself and are going through the motions taking a pay cheque and doing God knows what in their spare time.

The sight of the captain pissed in a pub badmouthing his own team-mates the night before the opening game of that season – a friendly against our rampant Invincible team – and then of him as the cause of a major drunk driving accident towards the end is, you feel, the tip of the iceberg, and only the most outward sign of a club whose problems extend far beyond what happens on the pitch, and serve to offer a partial explanation for that catastrophic campaign.

Without being on the inside, it’s impossible to know what the root causes are when a club degenerates to that level, but it was sufficiently well-known in football circles that Sunderland was such a club that The Secret Football suggests that there were players who quite specifically chose them because of their reputation for living it large without the pressure of having to perform on the pitch. A club is in serious, serious trouble when it gets in that state.

What is the culture like around our rivals? One where players openly boast about their own individual achievements even as the reek of failure wafts off the team as a whole. A club where its fans demand impossible standards and the players don’t even come close to meeting them but where a handful have the sense to play to certain parts of the gallery because they know that this will grow them a fan-club however little they give back.

A club where a complete non-entity like Todd Cantwell can find himself with “staunch” defenders in spite of temper tantrums, general laziness and where his head is very obviously somewhere other than the football is not one which is taking its due diligence particularly seriously.

Its two most senior squad players – Goldson and Tavernier – are amongst the most overpaid footballers on this island, with easily recognised limitations and deficiencies.

No other club would offer them close to what they are earning at Ibrox, something that was reflected at the end of last season when Goldson’s contract expired and nobody offered what Ibrox had to get him to remain there. As much as the media tried to dress that up as a boost to them, it was an acknowledgement that nobody outside Ibrox rated him.

Now the media clings to the hope that both players will be targeted by Gerrard and that he will throw some Saudi gold their way for the pair. They are likely to be disappointed, even taking into account the obvious truth that the club would not be hard to deal with and that they would accept nominal sums just to get them off the wage bill.

But will that change the culture at the club?

A cultural shift cannot start with the personnel, it’s about more than that.

There are deep-seated issues at Ibrox itself.

Failure still clings to them, and I just don’t get the impression that they have the right combination of characters there to change that, and especially not in the leadership.

I don’t subscribe to the mad theory they have over there that what the club needs are more “Real Ranjurs Men” but let’s not kid ourselves here, we’ve benefited massively from having people in the dressing room who “get” Celtic and we’ve been especially fortunate – although it’s clearly not just down to good fortune – to get managers who do as well.

Rodgers is a Celtic man from a Celtic family. Ange, being an immigrant, got it right away. Neil Lennon, like Rodgers, and like Martin O’Neill before him, needed no education in what Celtic is about … and this has been huge for us down through the years. Even Strachan, who was not from a Celtic background but who had played for top teams where the expectations were massive, came in and right away understood what was required.

Even Ronny, who is one of the most under-rated men in our recent history, had taken a modest club to a title and a domestic cup win. He brought a different set of standards, but he never let the overall ones at the club fall. Those standards are part of the Celtic culture now.

A lot of it is in having a certain discipline and whatever else you might say about Celtic that comes from the top of the house, and our directors. We are professional in how we approach our business. We do not do “Statement O’Clock” and whilst I think we should be more aggressive in pursuing our aims and objectives at certain times I like that we don’t tub-thump or use the club’s media department as a tool of deflection or disinformation.

This extends all the way through the club and this is never more obvious in the way the players and the manager speak with great care and respect whenever they are in front of the media, which does not stop the hacks from twisting their words of course.

But it’s hard to get a Celtic player or manager to indulge them in providing a controversy. On the few occasions where a Celtic boss or player gets headlines it is because that’s how we wanted it, whether that’s to make a point or put something in the public domain which we feel should be talked about. We do not indulge in trash-talking.

How many times have we covered this subject this season? They don’t know when to shut up. They don’t know when to stop. The only thing more constant than the failure is the mouthing off, and even on the way out the door these guys lack any self awareness at all.

John Lundstram posted his goodbye video to their fans tonight, and he chose to open it with the clip of his red card tackle at Celtic Park. Why? Because he thinks it makes him look staunch that he launched a vicious assault on one of our players. To him, that’s the equivalent of a movie “hero shot”. To their fans it’s a ridiculous thing to highlight, a contributing factor in that day’s result, one that many of them are convinced cost them the title.

That they are wrong doesn’t matter at all. It takes an almost staggering lack of self-awareness on his part not to be able to recognise that this decision will provoke hilarity amongst our fans and derision and scorn from those he expects to laud him for it. It’s the same lack of self-awareness that Tavernier showed earlier in the season where he posted a picture of him celebrating a goal in the 3-3 draw at Ibrox, where we left the ground very much in the title race.

Tonight, their fans are furious at that video, and they are castigating Lundstram for using that clip. They are not wrong to be, but he’s one player and their problems are much, much, much bigger than that, and they start at the top of the house. The culture of that club stinks. Years of wallowing in victimhood and bitterness have consumed them … the sense of entitlement has replaced the idea that rewards are gained and not simply bestowed.

They tolerate losing because there is always an excuse being made for them, there is always some desperate hack talking about “progress” and “closing the gap” and how it’ll all happen for them “next season”.

The idea that the “Ranjurs are coming” is toxifying because it allows them to coast in the here and now, as they wait for things to improve on their own.

But as John Fogerty famously said “someday never comes.”

Still they cling to it, and in the meantime they are indulged by a media which wants to turn every defeat into a victory … and as long as they bask in that mindset they will never get out of our shadow.