Yesterday, a story broke out of the latest Ibrox fan forum, and the media covered it in some detail. They had no choice. It’s been making waves across Ibrox fan sites, and the club itself published the minutes on their website.
There were some remarkable revelations, the first of which is that they don’t seem to be any closer to appointing senior executives.
It’s understandable that they don’t want to rush such crucial decisions, but this is taking an absurdly long time. You have to wonder if the environment within that club is now so toxic that nobody wants to touch it. No doubt they’ll find some ‘real Ranjurs men’ to fill the roles, but is that what they actually need to progress? I have my doubts.
The second revelation exposed a lie to their own supporters, one involving the Copland Road Stand issue. They had previously laid the blame on James Bisgrove, claiming materials hadn’t been delivered on time.
But it was then admitted at the fan forum that even if everything had arrived as scheduled, they still wouldn’t have completed the job before the season began. This was a huge project with an impossible timeline, one that was wildly unrealistic.
This will not come as any sort of surprise to regular readers here.
When the story first broke, this blog published information from insiders who said multiple companies had refused the job because the timeframe was unrealistic. Now the club has admitted that was true, revealing that they spent much of the summer stringing along both the media and their fans.
Worse still, they know they botched it so thoroughly that any future work risks similar delays, which is why they’re now hesitant to proceed with additional stadium improvements planned for next summer.
The entire saga is a shambles, and the fact that they’ve so thoroughly misled their own fans is disgraceful. They’ve blamed Bisgrove for months, and every word they told the press over the summer has been revealed to have been utter nonsense.
While we’ll probably never get the full story, I suspect they hired some cowboy firm with connections inside the club that over-promised and under-delivered in every way.
They also claimed they would fix the issues highlighted in the widely shared images showing restricted views in the updated section of the stand. Again, it’s amateur hour from start to finish, from design to building to the materials management. An absolute disaster.
Granted, major construction projects often run over budget and schedule; they could even argue this was just a series of unfortunate events. But that would only hold if they had been honest. Instead, they tried to spin the situation, shifting blame and presenting a story that wasn’t remotely close to the truth.
The minutes from this forum also confirm another previous report from this site: at the last forum, right before the delays were publicly announced, a fan rep specifically asked the board about the progress and was told everything was on track.
That’s a clear case of being economical with the truth. How they think they can repair the relationship with their fans after this is beyond me. That the Fan Forum members weren’t demanding that heads roll for that is astonishing.
But that’s their problem to solve. Whether their supporters trust a single word from the club going forward is up to them. However, the mainstream media should be outraged. They were misled, and journalists like Jackson, who served as the club’s mouthpiece by smearing Bisgrove’s reputation, should feel especially embarrassed.
Of course, Jackson and others won’t likely see it that way. Jackson, in particular, is used to being a mouthpiece for Ibrox, playing along for fear of losing his access or landing on their notorious ‘enemies list.’ Jackson isn’t really a journalist at all—he’s a PR puppet for the Ibrox club.
He’s not the only one, but he’s the main one they go to when they want a story out there. He’s more than willing to parrot whatever he’s fed. But eventually, the truth always surfaces, whether it’s in meetings like this one or in official reports that can’t hide the facts.
And every time, the mainstream press looks like a collection of fools for believing the club’s PR spin without verifying it independently. The way that club conducts itself is astounding, and the media’s willingness to play along even more so. How many more times must they be deceived before they learn not to believe a word coming out of Ibrox?
Will they ever learn? I doubt it.
I’d love to see them reply to this article, I remember when all this was happening some of their fan forums were calling it ‘Tim talk’, now the club are admitting it just not in as plain terms as we, or even any neutral would put it, which is another thing, surely there are some neutrals in the press willing to report true stories? What stops them?
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Then and now and forever until it’s a Tesco or Aldi or WItrose !