The Ibrox “Wall of Champions” is embarrassing. Unfinished, tacky, and £45 a shot.

The things you see online at times.

And sometimes, the mainstream media inadvertently makes you laugh with the pieces it highlights. This morning, I had one of those little moments when I read the Daily Record’s piece on the Ibrox fans who, having paid for the privilege, still haven’t had their faces appear on what’s known as the “Champions Wall.”

I remember when this story first emerged, with fans being asked to fork out £45 apiece to have their pictures blended into images of Ibrox’s most beloved heroes, with Steven Gerrard in the middle, holding his one solitary trophy.

At the time, I thought it was kind of insulting to genuine Ibrox legends—most of whom, of course, were associated with the first club, not the second. But I suppose if you’re taking the history literally – which all Celtic sites wish others would do – Gerrard has to be in the middle as the current club’s only title-winning boss.

Still, £45 to have your face put on a mural? And when you actually see the completed section, you have to admit they’ve done a decent job. But I still don’t know if I’d have paid £45 for it. It looks like you’d need a microscope just to make out individual features, which seems like a lot of money for not a lot in return.

And yet, you have to hand it to that club for continually finding bizarre ways to squeeze money out of fans. The reason so many are complaining now is that the project was started but never finished.

So plenty of people who paid their £45 have never actually received what they paid for—their faces are simply not on the wall. The Record spoke to some of them, including one particularly bitter individual who emailed the club several times, only to be ignored when he asked for a refund. Then, he discovered the other day that the website—meant to keep fans informed about the project—had been taken down.

According to the club, they are looking for a supplier to finish the task. That made me laugh because I just assumed that when they talked about the Wall of Champions, it was one of those things you’d want as a showpiece, something prominent, somewhere visible, somewhere you could pass it daily and admire it.

So why wasn’t this project finished on schedule?

Well what I didn’t know—until the Record kindly displayed photos of it—is where this thing is located. It’s not in a prominent position. It’s not somewhere highly visible. They’ve stuck it in a corner section of what looks an awful lot like an empty lot or an unfinished basketball court. It looks cheap. It looks tacky. And even if were an Ibrox fan and my face was on it, I don’t think I’d be visiting it too often.

It is so amateur hour. It’s horrible-looking.

It’s not prominent. It’s not remotely attractive. It looks like someone’s afterthought. So it’s hardly surprising that it remains unfinished—they probably forgot it was even there until the emails started flooding in, reminding them.

We talk a lot about how the Ibrox club has managed to squeeze more and more cash out of its hapless supporters. The phrase “a fool and his money are soon parted” could have been coined for these people. But when you break it down, this has to be one of the nastiest little stunts they’ve ever pulled.

And the area in which it’s been situated has been through all manner of bizarre changes. Wasn’t that the spot where they were supposed to build the memorial, where you could have your ashes interred while your family visited and charged their iPhones?

A lot of grotesque ideas like that have been floated over there over the years as means of squeezing more cash out of their daft fans, and I suppose, at the time, this one seemed like something with potential.

But it’s laughable to see how it’s turned out. It’s even more ridiculous when you consider that thousands of fans must have paid for it, and it remains incomplete. What went wrong with the initial contract? Why wasn’t it finished? Did the club run out of money to fund it? That would be hilarious.

I just know that if it were me, and I had paid for it, I wouldn’t want my face on it—not where it is, not how it looks.

It’s cheap-looking. It’s unattractive. It’s not prominent. It’s tacky. And to top it all off, the central figure on it had already quit before they even finished putting his image on the wall. It’s a symbol of embarrassment, to be frank. And if my face wasn’t on it, I’d pay another £45 just to make sure they never added it.

Photo by Rob Casey/SNS Group via Getty Images