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The Ibrox club will not catch Celtic with this hocus-pocus about ideological purity.

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Image for The Ibrox club will not catch Celtic with this hocus-pocus about ideological purity.

Last night, I read an excellent piece from my friend Paddy Sinat over on Inhale 67. In it, he referenced a conversation with one of the Village Idiots—which I suspect will become fairly notorious—where he hailed Celtic’s homegrown players and praised their contributions to the club. He specifically highlighted them as the kind of players the Ibrox club lacks and, undoubtedly, would love to have.

On the surface, this is a fairly uncontroversial claim. But to single out just a handful of our players as the ones the Ibrox club would covet is a bit of a stretch. The simple truth is, as we all know, they’d take any player from our team. They’d likely want every player in our squad—if, of course, they could ever afford them.

What The Village Idiot touched on is the old superstition over there that Ibrox “needs” homegrown players—guys who “get” the club—for it to function properly.

Personally, I think players can arrive at a club and understand its ethos almost instantly if the club has heritage and history. But here’s the rub: the problem for players crossing the city is that they’re joining a club that doesn’t have authentic heritage or history.

They’re walking into a place borrowing someone else’s past, pretending it belongs to them. In a mercenary business like football, people understand mercenary behaviour—and that’s precisely what that club is built on.

Yet they genuinely believe this narrative. They truly think that if they had a couple of Greg Taylors or Tony Ralston’s, the whole dynamic would shift, and they’d magically become a better team. But the simple fact is, it’s rubbish. Better players make better teams—it’s that straightforward. Whether those players “get it” or not is secondary. They can learn it. That comes from being part of a good environment and a winning side.

If you build the right team spirit and foster a strong atmosphere, everyone coming in will naturally adapt to it. On the other hand, start indoctrinating them into some bizarre, cult-like ideology, and you risk alienating them entirely. That’s when players start questioning whether they’ve made a terrible mistake. And, let’s be honest, that club is enveloped in a weird, toxic culture that must make many wonder what they’ve walked into.

They’re pressing forward with this idea of reinstating “club values.” It’s a stated objective now: to fill the place with “real Ranjurs men.” They’ve already begun, as I noted yesterday, by installing a chairman who ticks all the right ideological boxes. The Village Idiot’s piece is just the start of what will undoubtedly become a recurring narrative. It’s all about harking back to some mythical past, restoring some romanticised notion of glory.

But this is Sevco. Sevco has no values. They can stack the place with as many ex-players and nostalgic figureheads as they like, but winning mentalities don’t come from symbolism. They come from winning things. And that’s what they’ve failed to grasp. They don’t win—and worse, they aren’t going to start winning any time soon.

Here’s what should really scare them: after a while, when your club is no longer a major player, when it’s ceased to be a big beast, the narrative of being a “giant in waiting” starts to sound ludicrous. They’ve won one league title in 12 years, under highly unusual circumstances, during a global lockdown.

Their rivals, meanwhile, are consistently running away with everything in sight. When you keep spinning the line that you’re destined for greatness but produce nothing tangible to back it up, it starts to look like delusional arrogance.

Worse still, it creates pressure—pressure they don’t need.

You can’t tell players they’re arriving to “make history” and then burden them with the weight of it. They’ll fold under that pressure, especially if they lack a track record of winning. This is why their current strategy feels so fundamentally flawed.

Everyone knows the solution. It’s so simple it’s almost laughable. To challenge us, they need better players. That’s it. No 50 layers of complexity. Just sign better players, and you’ll win more games. It’s not rocket science.

It reminds me of a moment in the criminally underrated Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven. (The Director’s Cut; don’t see any other version.) When the defenders of Jerusalem realise all the knights are dead, Balian knights a group of ordinary men on the spot. “Does making a man a knight make him a better fighter?” someone asks him, and he responds, “Yes.” It’s a cinematic, rousing moment. Historically absurd, of course, but it works in the movie. Yet, here’s the thing: those knights still lose. They lose big. They fight bravely but are ultimately defeated.

That’s the story here. All this pseudo-psychology, all this cultural bluster they’re trying to infuse into their team—it might make them fight a little harder, but they’ll still go down. The coach will still get sacked. The board, if it survives, will continue to limp along, trying to stave off the inevitable and all the while racking up more debts.

This is their reality now. I don’t blame them for disliking it, but they’re not going to change it with cheap tricks and hollow rhetoric. This is hocus-pocus football management, and it’s destined to fail.

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7 comments

  • TonyB says:

    What is there to “get” about them, other than the fact that they’re a bunch of fascists, brought up on bigotry and racism, and living in the past?

    Anyone who “gets” that is someone whom no one else would want nor touch with a ten foot pole.

    Stupid stupid peepul.

  • SFATHENADIROFCHIFTINESS says:

    Tony’s, I was going to answer this in greater depth but you’ve written almost as that needs to be said. Their ‘past, history, heritage and culture’ is nothing more than a prison.
    It roots them in that past, to a heritage and culture that has no relevance to the modern world.By their very nature they self define as an Irrelevance.
    .

    • Martino Albano says:

      You are spot on mate. I have been a student of human behaviour and psychology my entire life, and continue to be so. Like you, I was going to pen a more explanatory reply from my own perspective, but it mirrors what you have already concluded and posted with a few words. Thus, there is no need to for me to any more. They indeed have created their own prison.

  • Johnny Green says:

    A couple of Greg Taylors? What a nightmare that would be… no thanks.

  • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

    They seem to think there’s a lot of people out there to “get” their 12 year and 121 as of today club…

    Pity it’s not people in ‘authority’ like The SFA and The SPFL that are out to do their job !

  • DavyBhoyMcAuley says:

    We can’t be complacent. Look what happened against Bruges. Plus they seem to be able to turn it on in Europe. Also, thanks for recommending a movie then no heads with a spoiler alert, ya bastard. Hail Hail comrades.

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