A Surreal Day At Ibrox Ends With Another Crazy, Self-Destructive Turn.

Today has been one of those surreal days, with almost everything revolving around the unfolding insanity across the street at Ibrox.

I knew this day would be entertaining, and that we’d have plenty to discuss, not just about last night’s result, but also about the complete mess they’re in and how that result impacts their ability to move forward. Their support is already teetering on the edge of fury, and I’m not sure how they plan to appease them.

But as usual, we’ve underestimated their capacity for self-destruction, a capacity that we always assume has some limits, but which we’re increasingly forced to consider might not.

Perhaps that club is just stuck in a permanent doom loop.

Earlier, I wrote about the situation with Propper, the central defender who decided to move up front during last night’s game, entirely of his own accord.

This raises serious questions about who’s really running the dressing room. And let’s not forget Jack Butland, who bypassed the manager to talk to the chairman directly, a classic example of disrespect towards the man supposedly in charge of the team.

And on a day when they’re dealing with the fallout of being knocked out of the Champions League, with their notoriously intolerant and always-angry support on the verge of complete detonation, the worst possible thing that could have happened was the dropping of a story about one of their new marketing executives and his prior employment at Celtic.

This is a story for the ages. It’s both incredible and hilarious that an organisation, especially one in their situation, could do something so colossally brain-dead and insulting to the vast, vast majority of its customers.

It’s not just that Blaine McConnell, the guy in question, worked for Celtic, it’s that he gave an interview some years ago when he took the job and declared himself a massive Celtic fan. Pictures doing the rounds on social media show him standing on the Celtic Park turf, grinning like a kid who’s just met Santa Claus.

Tonight, Ibrox fan media outlets are reported that they have terminated his contract; what a disgrace they are.

I hope this has cost them a fortune. I hope they are shame-faced with embarrassment over it.

The reaction to this over on their forums was sensational to behold.

As angry as they were before with the board of directors and the direction they’re taking the club, this took their fury and disgust to a whole other level.

I have to be honest, I’m beyond shocked at how unprofessional they can be.

I really shouldn’t find this astonishing anymore, but this was such an easy disaster to avoid, and that they’ve ended it by sacking the guy is an outrage. This is something any reasonably large organisation should have identified as a potential problem long before it exploded across the internet.

Now, I’ll admit that I feel a bit of sympathy here for the person who made the decision to hire this guy, and obviously for Blaine McConnell himself, who filled out an application, presumably to get a good job to feed his family. He was probably a more than just a decent hire, a professional person who knew what he’s doing … that he’s been turfed out of the job this early is almost obscene and I hope they paid him off well as a result.

The people who processed that application would have seen his experience at Celtic as a key factor in why he got the interview.

After all, the Celtic marketing department is excellent at what it does; thoroughly professional and hugely successful.

But … someone, somewhere, at some stage, should have sat this guy down and asked him straight up, “Is there any way this can come back to haunt us? You’re a self-proclaimed Celtic fan who worked at Celtic Park, so is there anything, anywhere, that someone later on could hold up in front of our faces and embarrass us with?”

After that point, any consequences were their club’s own damn fault.

This is a sensitive subject for their fans, and while part of me honestly admires that they initially hired the guy without considering this a problem – they just wanted someone who could do the damn job – I am flabbergasted at how completely they’ve failed to read the room and disgusted that they fired him for it.

We’ve talked a lot about Celtic’s perception problem, and how, for example, the hiring of Mark Lawwell was obviously a strategic error; a classic example of a board being out of touch with the views of the fans.

It’s all very well taking the high ground and thinking you can brass-neck this out, but it’s not that easy here in the West of Scotland. Everyone knows this.

If you’re smart, you should be aware that the perception this will create will be negative, and that the optics will stink to high heaven.

Ibrox fans do not believe that their board is in touch with the views of the fans.

They think there aren’t enough people at Ibrox who get, care about, or respect their traditions and ethos.

Under those circumstances, hiring a guy like this was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

You’re inviting anger and brazenly showing contempt for the feelings of the guys in the stands.

It showed a breathtaking failure to think through the potential effects and the poor guy is the one who has paid for that.

I have little doubt that he has squeezed them for a hefty sum. He did nothing wrong. This was their failure and it has to be one of the most calamitous self-inflicted wounds that even they have ever burdened themselves with, and at the worst possible moment to have done so.

I almost can’t believe the mind-bending stupidity and the incomprehensible failure to anticipate the anger this would cause when it was discovered, as it inevitably was going to be, and its taken a mere 36 hours for the shoe to drop, and all to unravel, and it does so in a news cycle that was already bad in any number of ways.

Only they could have done this. It’s inconceivable that any other football club could get something so simple, so incredibly wrong.

That club over there is in a class of its own when it comes to screwing things up.