The Ibrox club’s notorious supporters attacked the Celtic fans. Their owners can’t ignore that.

One of the most dishonest ways people will try to frame the aftermath of Sunday is to turn it into a generic “ultras problem.”

It is not that.

I covered the specific Ibrox problem yesterday. That club has a long history of incidents like we saw at the weekend, a history that predates the entire modern discussion about ultras culture by decades. Framing this around ultras is a convenient distraction. It is also a joke.

This is not even really about supporter culture in the broader sense. Supporter culture exists across Europe. Ultras groups exist across Europe. Some are political, some theatrical, some noisy, some provocative. Some are a pain in the neck for their own clubs and some occasionally step over the line.

But what happened at Ibrox, and what sits behind it, cannot be explained away by the word “ultras.”

The people ultimately responsible for this problem are not in the stands.

They are in the directors’ box.

If our issues begin at boardroom level, then so do those at Ibrox. Successive boards there, going back longer than I have been alive, have pandered to the worst elements in their support. Last night Joe McHugh said on the podcast that if they were forced to confront that element directly the club might become a non functioning business.

Perhaps.

But what will they become if they continue indulging people who still operate with a seventeenth century mindset?

What we saw on Sunday is what happens when a club allows a particular supporter element to acquire influence, legitimacy and the run of the place despite a long pattern of behaviour that should have set off alarm bells years ago.

Anyone who hears the words “Green Brigade” in that sentence is missing the point entirely. The comparison is absurd.

The Union Bears are not a misunderstood group simply trying to create atmosphere and wave a few flags. They are a hard line element whose activities have repeatedly dragged their club into trouble.

That is not rivalry talking. It is a matter of record.

It was not long ago that the Ibrox club itself had to issue a public statement after UEFA sanctioned them over a “racist and/or discriminatory” banner displayed during the Fenerbahce match. UEFA imposed a suspended closure of the Copland Stand. Rangers described the episode as “deeply saddening” and “frankly embarrassing” and said they were pursuing lifetime bans for those responsible.

Reuters reported that UEFA imposed a €30,000 fine for the banner along with additional sanctions relating to object throwing and blocked passageways.

Nobody should pretend this is some abstract debate.

These incidents have consequences.

BBC Scotland has also reported that Ross McGill first came to police attention through his activities while a senior member of the Union Bears before later emerging as a central figure in the gangland feud that has triggered a wave of violence across Scotland.

Again, that is not innuendo. It is not gossip from message boards. It is reporting from the BBC.

Now there is a line between what is known, what has been reported and what people infer from the wider pattern.

But one point can be stated safely.

When a supporter group repeatedly finds itself at the centre of reputational damage, disciplinary trouble, threatening behaviour and deeply uncomfortable associations, the issue stops being one of atmosphere.

It becomes a question of governance.

Why was this tolerated?

Why was it indulged to the extent that it has been?

There are reports that the current manager, whose predecessor was subjected to intimidation from these same supporters, held an off the record meeting with them only weeks ago. The club itself has also moved publicly to bring that group closer.

It did not take a genius to see where that might lead.

When the club made that decision, the Scottish football blogger Andy Muirhead wrote a remarkable Substack piece warning that it would have consequences.

On Sunday, only weeks later, here those consequences are.

The media wants to make this about ticket allocations, away supporters, pitch celebrations, rivalry and emotion. They want to frame it as a “both sides” issue.

That is all noise.

The real issue is simpler and uglier.

Sections of the Ibrox support have always demonstrated a troubling relationship with defeat. For some supporters the club’s struggles are experienced as something existential. The sense of entitlement surrounding the institution has grown even as its fortunes have declined.

The media has helped nurture that mindset by constantly reinforcing the idea that the club is uniquely important and that its supporters are justified in their anger.

When that anger is fed and validated year after year, it eventually manifests itself somewhere.

On Sunday we saw where.

The only realistic solution may now lie in legislative action and strict liability rules. I will discuss that in greater detail later, but the American investors involved with the club need to recognise a simple fact.

Unless this element of the support is brought under control, their investment is permanently at risk.

They may not want to confront that reality.

Eventually they may have to.

If a club knowingly allows a certain culture to flourish in public view, responsibility does not end at the turnstile.

It comes back to the club itself.

This is the part many people do not want to hear.

The Green Brigade comparison is a smokescreen. People can criticise elements of what the Green Brigade do. I have done so myself. You can debate pyro, political banners or anything else associated with supporter culture.

But collapsing everything into one giant “ultras” category is not analysis.

It is evasion.

The real issue is not whether two clubs have noisy groups behind one of the goals.

The real issue is whether one club has spent years legitimising and empowering a supporter element whose record should have forced much harder questions much earlier.

The culture inside the Ibrox stands was already volatile. Add a group actively seeking confrontation into that environment and the result becomes combustible.

Their club must now make a choice.

For its own good and for the good of the game, it needs to make the right one.

This conversation should already be happening if Scottish football were serious about governance, safety and accountability. The truth is that the Ibrox club itself would benefit most from confronting this problem honestly.

The American investors involved should not allow the situation to continue unchecked.

Permitting it in the first place was a mistake.

Indulging it was madness.

Now the reckoning has arrived.

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