Does the media know that Leeds and the Ibrox side aren’t the same club?

If you’ve been surfing the net lately and checking out the news aggregator sites—both those covering our club and the ones across the city—you’ll have noticed a strange curiosity. More and more of are being swamped by stories about Leeds and what’s happening over there. It’s like everything’s about Leeds these days.

Later, I’m going to write a piece focusing on one specific element of this, but for now, let me just say this: the Pro-Ibrox media’s Leeds fixation must be driving some of their own fans up the wall. There’s more content about Leeds on those sites than there is about their own club. And all of it, of course, is being framed as somehow relevant to Ibrox. But in truth, very little of it actually is.

So here’s my question to some of the hacks and Ibrox fan sites churning out this stuff almost hourly: do you even know that Leeds and your club aren’t the same thing?

It’s ridiculous. “Leeds are getting a new manager”—except they’re not. Still, that story did the rounds on nearly every site a few weeks ago. “Leeds are getting a new stadium.” “Leeds have got all these new sponsors.” “Leeds have got this, Leeds have got that.” “Leeds have a tie-up with Red Bull.” This stuff is in the papers all the time now. Leeds’ promotion story was carried by more Scottish outlets than English ones. And all of it is framed like there’s some great lesson in it for Ibrox.

Some of it is just nonsense.

They look at the transfer fees Leeds are getting and automatically try to draw parallels with their own club’s transfer strategy—even though one bears no resemblance to the other. What works at Leeds won’t work in the Scottish Premiership. Leeds, by virtue of being in England and now back in the Premier League, can command higher fees for their players—even the bad ones.

They look at the commercial contracts at Leeds and assume that this has something to do with the 49ers’ involvement. It doesn’t. Leeds operates in a much bigger marketplace. They have access to TV money we don’t, to a wider global audience than we do. There’s just more money down there. There’s a bigger advertising market. That’s why they get bigger deals. Some of those deals simply aren’t available to Scottish clubs. That’s a reality that even a change of ownership at Ibrox won’t alter.

They see Leeds talking about redeveloping their stadium—from one that holds thirty-some thousand to one that’ll hold fifty-some thousand—and they draw their own conclusions. But Leeds need a bigger ground to reach their full potential in England. The Ibrox club has already maxed out its potential here in Scotland. At a certain point, you run into the law of diminishing returns.

Now the latest buzz is that Leeds’ directors are all heading to Ibrox. That every 49ers connection at Leeds will somehow benefit the Ibrox side. But from where I’m sitting—and based on everything I’ve read—precious little of the money the 49ers have put into Leeds is going to be funnelled into Ibrox, not that there’s much of it anyway.

Which of course, leads us into another area we’ve talked about; the media is acting like the 49ers’ vast wealth is the Ibrox club’s own personal fund.

It’s like all their prayers have been answered, just because these guys are in the picture. But they’re not Leeds. The circumstances at Leeds are not the same as those at Ibrox. For one thing—and I know this is a tricky point they don’t like to discuss—the 49ers own Leeds, lock, stock and barrel.

When they first arrive at Ibrox, it’ll be as minority shareholders with a controlling interest. That is not the same thing. But people are getting those two things very, very mixed up. Leeds is their house. Of course they want to spend money on their house.

But as I’ve said before, this is like renting a property. If you’re only a co-signatory on the mortgage, or if you’re just renting, you don’t start building patios or extensions. You spend your own money on things like that only when you own the place outright.

There’s some weird disconnect in their heads about where the Leeds United story ends and their own begins. They can’t seem to separate the two, and I don’t get it. In some ways, this is a reflection of how they relate to us. Because they define what they want to be by looking at what we are. So perhaps it’s no surprise they’re now trying to define their future based on what’s happening at another club entirely. The only thing that might overlap is some vague idea of shared ownership.

This is what happens when a fanbase spends decades waiting for someone else to pick up the tab. This is what happens when a club has no pride in its own achievements—because all of those achievements were bought and paid for by someone else. I’ve said this many times on the blog: my pride at being a Celtic fan, and every bit of pride I feel walking up the Celtic Way, comes from knowing we built that together.

In some ways, it’s not even their fault. These are people raised on David Murray spending money he didn’t have, followed by directors spending even more than they should have. They’ve never known a club that lived within its means. If there’s a downturn, you simply spend less. We’ve taken the hits for that. We’ve endured the lean years. We’ve had disasters. We’ve had seasons when we won nothing. All of it was to build a foundation for strength.

In recent years, they’ve been obsessed with copying Celtic. Now they’re obsessed with trying to be Leeds. When will it be enough for them to just be the best version of themselves?
Never—because that would mean accepting that they’ll always be second to Celtic. And no matter what fantasy they cling to, that’s a truth they simply can’t face.