The Ibrox AGM is today. Their fans should ask hard questions … I doubt they will.

Normally I’d never start the day with a story about them when there’s a story to post about us, but this is what I get for not publishing this piece yesterday when it was written: I clean forget their AGM was early in the day. Not that it’s going to matter much.

Last night the Ibrox club recorded their biggest win of the season, and not a moment too soon for the manager or for the rest of their club. If this was Derek McInnes audition for the job it was a disaster. Or maybe it wasn’t. Conspiracy theorists of the world, unite.

As everyone knows, the Ibrox AGM is rapidly approaching. The media, as usual, is full of articles about the issues that supposedly need to be raised, the questions to ask, and the answers the fans should demand. Last night has changed the dynamic. It has given them breathing room. The simple truth is, none of that is going to happen, because the deflector shields will be set to full and the board can now expect to get through it relatively painlessly.

I thought they would anyway. The problems at Ibrox start in the stand and the fans themselves are not willing to listen, understand, and especially not accept bad news. No fanbase in world football is less inclined towards those things than theirs.

There’s a bit of this in all of us, of course—a natural tendency to avoid difficult conversations because we might not like what we hear. But their fans get one chance every year, just as we do, to sit in front of their board and ask the hard questions. If you’re going to ask hard questions, though, you’d better be prepared for hard answers. They need to hear some hard answers. Whether they’ll get them or not is another matter. But you have to be willing to ask.

No fan-base is so inclined towards getting euphoric over individual results either. That’s why there will be very little friction today. It will go much more smoothly than it otherwise might.

And it’s not like there aren’t a lot of questions to ask.

Take the January transfer window as an example. In their shoes, I’d want to know just how difficult the financial situation is going into that window. I’d want to know if they should prepare themselves for a modest window rather than the spending spree some of them seem to expect. I’d be ready to hear that their resources are limited and that they may need to sell before they buy.

I’d also be questioning the precise costs of the Hampden move, because a lot of information has been flying around, much of it likely inaccurate. I’d want to know how badly this impacted the club. I’d also want to know about the most recent tranche of debt-for-equity swaps—whether it affected fan shareholdings and if further dilution of fan-owned shares is likely in the future.

I’d absolutely want to know what happened with the chairman, and with the last CEO. Was James Bisgrove the person responsible for the stadium fiasco, or is he being unfairly blamed for something he wasn’t involved in? I’d also be asking about the status of any new investment: what kind of terms it would involve and why the club hasn’t managed to attract external backers if they’ve been trying. Dispelling the myth of people queuing up to hand the club money is critical.

Asking for an update on the manager’s future would be futile, of course. If the directors were to declare their faith in him and promise he wouldn’t be sacked no matter the results for the rest of the season, how exactly would their supporters handle that?

Strangely enough, I think they might take it better than their own board assumes. Again, they’ve had a couple of good results and that always gives a manager over there breathing space. It always makes their supporters pliable and easy to handle.

I give that fanbase a hard time, and they deserve it, but I’m not 100% convinced they wouldn’t react well to being told the plain truth for once. The problem is, those fans are shielded from reality so often that it’s hard to predict how they’d handle it if they were suddenly confronted with it.

To get out of their current mess, they need to understand it fully—without sugar-coating. And therein lies the problem. Their entire recent history is littered with examples of the truth being buried under spin. What their fans need at this AGM is to ask the right questions and get real answers. If it turns into a screaming match, they’ll achieve nothing.

As tough as it might be for them to hear, this board of directors might be the smartest they’ve had in a while—at least in recognising that the club has to start running sustainably. If they’ve finally realised this, the AGM would be the perfect time and place to level with the fans.

But to hear the truth, you have to want to hear it. Like someone visiting a doctor about a serious concern, you have to be ready for the worst possible news. A cure begins with a diagnosis; without that, problems only worsen. Knowing the truth is the first step to fighting it, and that’s the mindset their fans and board alike should embrace.

Yet I suspect this AGM will pass without much incident.

I expect vague promises that things will improve, with no concrete details.

While the board might face a rough ride, I doubt it will face the sort of pressure that topples directors or forces real change. And, as ever, the Ibrox fans will likely avoid the hardest questions—because they might not want to hear the answers.

And that, of course, is how charlatans and grifters get away with it for as long as they do.