The Union Brats tried to offend Celtic fans and Scotland. But they hurt themselves instead.

Tomorrow, I’m going to do a couple of pieces on the Ibrox fans and certain elements of their support, and what their future might look like. I’m also going to touch on the official response to what we saw over the weekend. But for the moment, I just want to focus all my attention on the Union Brats.

Today they’ve released a statement glowing about having pissed off most of the country. To be perfectly blunt, much of the country does not give a damn what moronic nonsense they put up on their banners. But Police Scotland gives a damn – and Police Scotland is investigating that banner from yesterday. And their own club gives a damn, as their own club has made perfectly clear.

I’ll go into the motivations behind the club’s statement, and the club’s wider response, a little later on – as I said, I’ve got a couple of pieces on this lined up for tomorrow.

But these yahoos need to understand that the people who are most furious with them right now are their own. And unfortunately for them, it doesn’t matter in the slightest what the rest of us think. What matters – a lot – is what their club thinks, and what their club might be prepared to do.

It’s not the first time I’ve suggested they’re putting themselves in existential peril. That’s been evident for a while. What’s even more evident is that they don’t seem to care. This is not the first time their club has publicly slapped them down. The banner itself was seized by police. The club is fuming and has accused them of crossing the line. It’s not hard to understand why the club feels that way.

These people don’t have a strategic thought in their heads.

It’s obvious that the last thing they should be doing is antagonising their club right now. The Celtic support as a whole looked at that banner yesterday and laughed at it. A topless Graeme Souness holding a gun?

Yes, I know it’s based on an actual photo. But it’s the kind of photo you’d expect to find on the front cover of a gay men’s magazine – and I’m reasonably sure that’s not the image they were trying to convey. When taken together with those blue gimp masks, I’ve genuinely no idea what message they are sending or image they are presenting of their own organisation. But whatever it was, it was very odd indeed.

All joking aside, it’s the sentiment behind the tifo – and the words they slapped across the bottom of it – that mark these people out as a stain on our game and a stain on this country. It was grotesquely offensive. It reeked of the same lunatic mindset that was all too evident in the banner that got them in trouble with UEFA.

Although I’ll go into this in more detail in a separate piece, it’s not hard to imagine how this was viewed by the Americans who were there. They must have looked at that banner in disbelief, astonished at the level of depravity – not just in the display itself, but in the general behaviour of the Ibrox fans.

Again, I’ll cover this more fully tomorrow, but I think some of the media reaction has been astonishing – and unintentionally hilarious as well. If the Union Brats are genuinely sitting there wondering what they’ve done to cross a line, I might actually agree with them in part.

Because while that banner was disgusting in every way, it’s no more or less disgusting than some of the songs that echo out of that ground every week – songs which people like Tom English have been stonily silent on for a long, long time.

It’s also worth pointing out that many outlets published images of that tifo without so much as a comment on its message – even though that message was absolutely crystal clear – and are now working themselves up into a fit of outrage. That’s bandwagon jumping and only because the club itself has attacked it.

But all that aside, you still have to marvel at Peepul who are this stupid. When all eyes are on them, they go and do this. They indulge their hatred to the fullest, in the most offensive way possible, at a time when their club is already putting them on notice.

This is how they choose to respond? When support for them in the wider fanbase is already at an all-time low? This is the message they want to send – the image of the club they want to present to the world?

It’s absolutely unbelievable, the level of self-harm involved here, and I’m reminds me of a moment in Season One of True Detective, when Rust Cohle talks about preferring it when people’s bigotry and hatred and ignorance are on full display rather than hidden. And I agree with that sentiment.

I’d rather these people show us exactly who and what they are, so the rest of us can make an informed decision about how to deal with them. What is amazing is that they appear determined to force their own club into exactly that choice.

And even when you think you’ve seen it all, that is something to be amazed by.

If the club disbands this group – and it very well might – and I suspect there are already people inside the walls at Ibrox who want to do just that, then these clowns will have no one to blame but themselves.