Ibrox Fans Fail To Ask The Big Questions But Their Fantasy Puts Celtic In A European Cup Final.

The straws they clutch to … oh dear God, how pathetic.

This afternoon I saw this post on an Ibrox fan page on Facebook.

This is wonderful, right?

I mean, you look at it and you think to yourself, “The craziness that lives in the heads of these Peepul …” This is a lovely theory. Except that if you subscribe to it and you live in that particular avenue of reality, there’s something else that you might have failed to consider.

Every time England has won a major final, we have won the European Cup the following year. So, Ibrox fans, you still putting any store in this? You still wanna say that daft stuff?

Obviously, I am kidding. Except I’m not really. This is a classic example of the way their wee minds work, a wee torchlight shone into the gloom that they exist in. They spent so much of their lives wrapped up in these mad fantasies … and here’s the thing. As I’ve said before, if you live in a fantasy world you always have to fear dragons.

And if they believe in this sort of karmic coincidence, our winning the Champions League next season is a pretty big dragon to be afraid of. If their fantasy world has an internal logic to it then they should recognise that in it, anything and everything can happen.

Let’s for a moment get serious. Cause there is a serious point to this piece.

Today they played a pre-season friendly against Ajax and lost 2-1 due in no small part to Connor Goldson flubbing his lines and their super-keeper fumbling an easy ball. On their forums there is some anger, even rage, at both players and questions about why neither Cantwell nor Tavernier featured. Tavernier was left out of the squad for their last game too.

Some of them surmise that this is because they are wrapping him in cotton wool prior to shipping him off to whichever Saudi club pays the money.

But really? I think not. Goldson was allegedly the subject of an actual enquiry from Birmingham and he’s still in the team. There is a much more likely explanation for where Cantwell is – that he and the manager have fallen out, and a similar explanation as to where Tavernier is at the moment. His is the more interesting of the two cases.

Because although we do get a lot of mileage and fun out of mocking Tik-Tok-Todd it’s his counterpart amongst the missing who is the club captain, after all. It is not difficult to conjure up scenarios wherein both of them might be pretty pissed off.

Cantwell found out recently that the club was offering him around like bad coke at a stag-do, and how did he discover this? A lamentable failure wherein one of the people brokering the deal sent the wrong email to the wrong person. Instead of the proposal ending up at Lecce it ended up in the papers, where Cantwell was evidently as surprised as his fan club was to find out that the club had been trying to do a deal for him on the quiet.

But the Tavernier story is much worse, and much more likely to have serious implications unless they can find a way to offload the most 32-year-old most highly paid player in the Scottish game, a defender who cannot defend but who has had more penalty practice than any other footballer in Europe.

In short, there’s not much chance of it unless Gerrard really does fancy gambling with his job a little, and his boss’s money at the same time.

Here’s what I think has happened here; you remember the story about the armband being given to Butland? Well, everyone knows that was a true story, everyone knows they contemplated that and that they made sure their media buddies knew it.

What did I reckon had happened to change their minds?

A dressing room revolt, led by Tavernier himself.

There is no bid for him currently on the table, but he’s not part of the squad? Something has happened behind the scenes, something big … and that’s what I reckon is the cause of it. They tried to publicly humiliate him and he fought back and now he and the manager are in a classic standoff.

Which is all well and good if he’s just a player … but the captain?

That’s trouble. That’s more trouble than a club already in trouble needs.

But that’s Ibrox. And in the meantime, the fans indulge wild fantasies and bizarre theories.

Talk about Peepul fiddling whilst their club burns.