A new week starts with another bizarre self-inflicted wound at Ibrox.

Last week, someone drew my attention to a bizarre story that had appeared on Ibrox social media in relation to their new sports bar and that story has now exploded all over the mainstream press. I didn’t write about it at the time because I thought it was pretty small-time stuff, although stuff that was indicative of the shambolic nature of how things work at Ibrox.

In light of today’s story, it’s apparently a much bigger deal than it seemed to be, not because the club is facing legal action over it, at least not yet, but because it’s another thing they’re attempted to blame on James Bisgrove, and because the club itself appears to be taking a harder line on the issue than the initial reports appeared to suggest.

In spite of assurances being given that no one is willing to, or intends, to pursue legal action in this matter that’s very obviously not off the table.

The story itself is obviously messy and another sign their club has a lot of competing interests in it, and a lot of people behind the scenes who are at odds with each other on various elements of the business and the strategy and everything else and some of them are quite petty and vindictive. And I’m not going to point fingers here and accuse people of anything, but I think it’s apparent when you look at the alliances, that there is still a lot of backstabbing going on.

I’ll give you the scenario as I understand it here.

A couple of years ago, the Ibrox club announced its intention to open its sports bar and called it G51. That name and that logo was already in use by Craig Houston, a prominent member of Club 1872, on a number of his own businesses.

It turns out that he has trademarked the name and the logo and owns them outright.

The club proceeded with its plan, although it was well aware of this fact. And now there is some question as to whether or not they can use the name. Legally they can’t, but someone has to be willing to take it to court and Houston says he doesn’t want to.

Now Houston has gone out of his way to blame their former CEO James Bisgrove for this; that’s not a new tactic as their club has done it over their stadium problems.

Bisgrove is not at the club any longer. Those who are at the club at the moment had the choice not to do this, and they’ve decided to do it regardless. He says he does not intend to or want to sue. But that doesn’t mean that he won’t. His statement to the newspapers also says today that the club hasn’t decided on a final name for the bar, in spite of the bar displaying prominently the G51 name and logo, even as something that hasn’t been opened yet. It seems to me very much like the club has settled on the name and on the branding and fully intends to continue using them no matter whether he owns them or not.

Houston is not the sharpest tool in the box; his social media account is a shambolic mess of daft political ideas and backwards social views.

But it’s worth wondering; what was going on with this thing?

This clearly had a lot of pettiness and stupidity at its core. The club didn’t have to decide to ride roughshod over him, especially when they know this will be a really big issue if Houston himself decides to make it one.

It’s strange that he had the details for this to hand before the club had made its official announcement, and before the name was in the public domain. So, someone in a position to know the details leaked that to him and his first thought was to do this.

I mean it is childish. And over what? Whatever the intent behind this was, you don’t get this at well run, well functioning clubs. It is bizarre.

Houston and some of his cohort are key allies of Dave King and Dave King has been very busy spouting off in the media of late; a subject that believe me, I intend to write about as soon as possible. But it seems every time I get started, he comes out in the press to make another statement.

Now at the moment he is batting for the Ibrox board and its current employees but it helps his cause to take a situation like this and have it blamed on Bisgrove and on Douglas Park and people like that. Because the little internecine conflict is still going on, at low level, and he obviously still blames some of the board for his own ousting.

So it is quite obvious that there’s a lot of backstabbing behind the scenes and that there’s a lot of odd stuff happening, the sort of stuff that would not happen anywhere else.

This kind of thing wouldn’t even be an issue at Celtic.

Celtic would have dotted i’s and crossed the t’s on this a year before anything was ever put on paper. I mean, whatever I may think of the transfer strategy, our corporate policy is spot on and our corporate staff are exceptionally good at what they do.

These guys would have swiftly lawyered up the second there was a possibility of something like this. They would have got around the table with the people involved and sorted it out without any fuss. And if it was going to cause fuss, the obvious strategy would have been just to change the name and call it something else.

So why didn’t the board over there do it?

Because whatever low-level conflict is going on over there, nobody wants to back down. It all looks very, very childish and spiteful and chickenshit to a level which most fan organisations and individuals connected to them would never have pursued unless inspired to some malicious end.

And whatever people are saying in public, there are obviously conversations going on in private about it which are not as friendly. Otherwise, there would be no fuss.

I guess we’ll see when the bar over there finally opens or they start changing the branding on it. But Houston clearly expects that there will be a change of heart and the club apparently doesn’t think it’s a problem keeping things as they are.

It will be very interesting to see what happens next

But this could really only have happened at Ibrox, and there really ought to be a counter on every one of their fan sites which reads “Time since our last screw up.” Just for reference. It would be astonishing if that counter ever got higher than a month.

That place is locked in a permanent vortex of this stuff. Nothing ever seems to change it.