The Silence of the Bams.

Last weekend, because of the international break, we didn’t do our podcast until the start of the week rather than at the weekend. We genuinely didn’t feel there was going to be all that much to talk about.

Then the UEFA sanction against the Ibrox club came down, giving us one of our cues for the conversation. The Ibrox club made it clear that it was angry with its own supporters and demanded a change in their attitude.

That’s why we called last week’s podcast The Silence of the Bams.

I love it when you’re trying to make a point about something, and the subjects of that point pretty much prove your case. That’s exactly what happened in The Silence of the Bams podcast, as our live format drew its first comments from the other side of the city—racist, sectarian, just awful.

I have to admit that I didn’t react terribly well to it. I got pissed off. I always get angry when I see that kind of shocking stuff. I always get angry when bigots and racists are having a pop at me, and I always respond aggressively. Maybe that’s a failing I should work on. But I tend to think they’re the ones who should be working on stuff because they’re the ones with the real problems.

Since that podcast, they’ve visited Dundee at the end of a tumultuous week in which their forums buzzed with all manner of debates and arguments about what the future of their club is going to look like. Whether the bigots in the stands really are going to be forced to pipe down or join the civilised world.

Before yesterday’s game, their club issued another statement, once again telling them to behave. This time, it wasn’t just about pyro or banners. The club has finally gotten real on the subject of the songs and chants.

Watching their game yesterday, there was a distinct absence of some of those chants. If their club is serious about taking these people on, that should have the broad support of every single one of us because it will make this country a better place.

But we know, of course, that some of them will not reform simply because they don’t want to. There is an element of the Ibrox fanbase as bigoted as you will ever get. They’re set in their ways, comfortable in their culture, and nothing is going to shift them from those poisonous views and their expression of them.

The problem they’re going to have is that we’re not the only ones getting in their face and challenging them on it in times to come.

I said this to some of those toe-rags on the podcast the other night when I lost my temper a little bit. In spite of my anger, I was very clear-headed in what I wanted to say, and I think I got the message across.

Their biggest problem is no longer Celtic fans calling them out on their garbage. If their own club is now committed to it, then it’s only a matter of time before some of their fellow fans find the courage to do the same. I know some of them have wanted to do it for years but haven’t had the guts because they knew the club wouldn’t back them.

The club itself has lacked the courage to do this for a long, long time and only now seems to understand that it damages the brand, that there are consequences for allowing this sort of stuff to flourish in the stands. I’m not saying they’ve suddenly become angels. What they have done is grasp the significance of the moment and recognise how dangerous it is to them.

The reason they’ve grasped it is simple.

The Americans are doing their due diligence right now, and whatever deals are yet to be signed and sealed can still be walked away from. The Americans don’t want to buy a toxic asset. So, it’s in the interest of this board to try to detoxify it as much as they can. There is no way they are doing this off their own back. The Americans have told them this is a condition of the sale. They’ve made it clear that they have no interest in taking on an institution weighed down with filth.

The most interesting change that may be about to happen at that club is the cultural one. As I said on the podcast and have written on this blog, we’re talking about people from the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the US. A prominent family from a Catholic background. People who will not simply shrug off the cultural message of tens of thousands of fans singing about being up to their knees in Fenian blood.

If they’re going to sink serious money into buying the club—and I mean buying it, not just rebuilding it—the cost will be enormous.

If they’re ever going to get that money back, the only way they can do it is by growing the brand. The problem the Ibrox club has had for the whole of its existence, and the problem Rangers had for about twenty-odd years before they went out of business, is that they’ve reached the limits of their growth potential precisely because of the cultural baggage they weighed themselves down with.

I talked last week about David Murray’s forthcoming autobiography. No individual did more to limit that club than he did.

He thinks that because he signed Catholic players, he was some sort of progressive. But remember, when Fergus McCann started the Bhoys Against Bigotry campaign, Murray called him out on it and said no one wanted to see the fixture diluted of hatred, that it would always be part of it.

The signing of Catholic players was almost entirely undone by the club’s demand that they not show their faith in any way, shape, or form. Then came the introduction of Britishness Days, leading to the full embrace of unionism and militarism, which haunts them now. All of it limited their potential for growth.

Here’s what the degenerates in their support are going to have to wrap their heads around. If the Americans are going to grow that club they have to be eliminated from the stands, or at least cowed into silence. That process is already underway. Their club is already trying to get a grip on them and trying to tell them what is and is no longer acceptable. There’s nothing they can do about it.

The club’s statement after the UEFA verdict made it clear—if you will not support the club’s vision of its future, you can go somewhere else. They don’t like it, but that’s not a message from me, or you, or the Celtic support, or the Scottish Government, or the SFA, or UEFA, or any other body. That’s the board of directors of their own club laying it on the line for the first time in a generation.

It should have happened way before now.

What’s more, the Union Brats and others who want to chant their hatred should not kid themselves that this will dissipate when the takeover happens. The takeover is why it’s happening. The Americans are not going to come in and run a club renowned for this kind of bigoted bile flowing from the stands. Not only can they not afford to, they will not want to be associated with any of that stuff and will probably find it every bit as abhorrent and backward as we all do.

For those particular Peepul, their day is over. They just don’t know it yet.

Neither does their interim manager, who will have done his chances of getting the gig no good at all by refusing to confront the behaviour of his player at the derby, and his effort to handwave it as of no consequence. All this stuff being preached by Barry Ferguson about understanding the culture has already been rendered redundant. He hasn’t grasped this. He soon will. He’s arrived at exactly the wrong time. He’s arrived at the very moment that the club is finally reckoning with all the supremacist rubbish it’s been tarred with for decades. And he epitomises all of it.

The Union Brats have also forced a confrontation with the club at precisely the wrong time. One way or another, the club was going to have to face up to them and eliminate their brand of bigotry from its ranks. But for them to showcase it in the worst possible way while American investors are doing their due diligence took a special kind of stupidity. The cost to them is going to be enormous.

The sectarian trash who decided to have a go at me, Joe, and Eric on the podcast last week now have to face a harsh reality coming from within their own club.

Nobody wants these people. Nobody wants to live in their world. Their own board knows that there will be no sale while they pour forth their bile and bigotry. The Americans aren’t coming in to let it pollute the brand.

So yeah, change is coming to the Ibrox club, but not in the way these people thought. Whatever else happens over there, this is the kind of change every single one of us should welcome. It is long overdue.