Ibrox’s conspiracy obsession is now so great it terrifies them.

There is something amusing about the Ibrox club going to war with Scottish football’s governing bodies once again. The reason it is amusing is that it is so familiar to all of us. How many times have we been here? We know every step along the way.

First, the statement lands. The language is grave. The tone is wounded, outraged and full of implication. The fans are told that the club will not stand for this. That questions must be answered and explanations must be given. That the matter cannot be allowed to rest.

Then the process runs its course.

Then the governing body rules, investigates, reports, sanctions or shrugs. Ibrox suffers a routine humiliation. After that, the noise changes. There is even more fury, and the hints begin that some gigantic conspiracy has moved against them again.

That is the bit worth remembering in the middle of this latest Ibrox strop, where they have accepted Celtic’s position only after the SPFL said we were right. In the Ibrox clubs statement, they accepted the verdict but made sure they referenced the SFA investigation into the scenes at Ibrox after the Scottish Cup quarter-final.

We have seen this act before. We have seen the demand for accountability, the call for full transparency and the insistence that only an investigation will do. Let’s not forget, it was their club that referred this latest matter to arbitration.

What we have not seen, at least not with any consistency, is the Ibrox club accepting the results of those inquiries when they do not get what they want. That is the great fraud in all this. Ibrox demands answers and then shrieks when it gets them.

They are forever demanding investigations, but only the kind that return a verdict they can use. That club loves process when it thinks process will vindicate it. It loves authority when it thinks authority will punish someone else.

Most of all, it loves independent scrutiny right up until independent scrutiny fails to deliver something useful for a triumphant Ibrox press release.

Then, all of a sudden, the inquiry is flawed. The report is incomplete. The governing body is compromised and the result is unsatisfactory. All of it gets swept into the great archive of grievances, where every defeat becomes evidence of persecution and every failed campaign becomes proof that the system is rigged.

That is how the monster grows. One grievance at a time. One imagined slight after another. Eventually, the conspiracy becomes so vast that even the people who invented it start to tremble before it.

We saw it, first, I think, after the 2016 Scottish Cup final. That was supposed to be the NewCo’s first great moment on the big stage.

Instead, Hibs won the cup, Hampden descended into chaos, and the aftermath became an Ibrox war with the SFA. We know what happened, and the parallels with what happened in the recent cup game are too obvious to ignore.

The inquiry took place. It apportioned them a share of the blame, which they vowed not to accept. They demanded urgent talks with the SFA and the author of the report into the disorder. They claimed the document contained factual inaccuracies and contradictions.

In short, they were furious that the report did not land exactly where they wanted it to land. Lost in their delusions, they believed it would vindicate the thuggish behaviour of their fans. Instead, the report condemned them.

There was no shortage of serious issues that day. Nobody should pretend otherwise. The whole thing was a shambles, and Scottish football had every right to demand answers, although the media set its stall out almost at once, taking the predictable side.

But here is the point: people sought answers. A report appeared. Recommendations followed. So, the club faced accountability for the behaviour of its fans. That was not the answer the Ibrox club wanted.

So, the report itself became the target.

That is the pattern. It repeats over and over again.

An inquiry is only worthwhile if it returns the correct conclusion. The correct conclusion is always the one that absolves Ibrox, condemns somebody else and if not, it feeds the grievance machine for another few weeks.

The same thing happened during Covid, when the Ibrox club decided it was going to bring down the SPFL with a dossier.

What a time that was. Scottish football was in the middle of a once-in-a-century crisis. Clubs were trying to survive. The lower leagues had ground to a halt. Money had to be released. Decisions had to be made under pressure that no governing body in the modern era had ever faced. Ibrox wanted it all its own way.

The media fully backed their demand for an independent investigation into the SPFL’s handling of the resolution to end the league season. Tom English, trembling as he thumbed through their dossier, on the BBC, gushed that they had found their smoking gun. He was not the only person who saw in that pitiful document only what he wanted to see.

The Ibrox club made huge claims. It promised evidence.

It created an atmosphere where its supporters believed some vast scandal was about to be uncovered. Then came the dossier, presented to clubs at a meeting where some around the table openly scoffed at it. Foremost among them was Peter Lawwell himself, who treated it as a joke worthy only of Celtic’s contempt.

All the clubs got a look at it. They listened to the arguments. They voted. They rejected the demand for an independent inquiry. There was nothing in that document but the same fevered paranoia the Ibrox club had been screaming about for months.

That was the moment the whole campaign should have died. In any serious organisation, that would have been the end of it.

You make your case. You present your evidence. You ask the member clubs to back you. They decide not to. You take the result and move on. Not at Ibrox. There, losing the vote became part of the conspiracy.

The failure to persuade other clubs was not treated as a failure of evidence, argument or strategy. It became another grievance. Another great injustice. Another line in the long, dreary book of “everyone is against us.”

This is what they do. They do not really fight the governing bodies. They perform opposition to them. There is a difference.

Real power is when you can force an outcome. Real leverage is when your threat changes the behaviour of the other side. Real influence is when your evidence is so compelling that even your opponents have to accept it.

In short, it is measured in the way we just got the result we wanted here.

What the Ibrox club usually brings to these battles is noise. Lots of volume. Then, when the noise clears, very little else remains.

That is why its current support for the SFA investigation into the events at Ibrox is so interesting. This time, the investigation concerns an event at their ground, one involving their own fans in a way that is unmistakably negative.

Police Scotland condemned the behaviour of supporters after the match, although it made damned sure to suggest that the on-field presence of Celtic fans kicked it all off. Still, arrests have been made.

Of course, the Ibrox club wants the review to be broad.

For reasons known only to itself, it wants everything examined. It wants Celtic’s allocation looked at. It wants the behaviour of Celtic supporters looked at. It wants decisions before, during and after the game looked at.

Fine. Let all of that happen.

Nobody on our side should fear scrutiny. If Celtic supporters behaved disgracefully, say so. Celtic supporters entered the pitch; we will cop some flak for that, for sure. The incident involving the crashing of the gate will face full scrutiny, but that is much more complicated than the media has suggested.

If Celtic have questions to answer, we will face them. This blog has never argued that our club or our support should be immune from criticism or consequence.

But let’s be honest; because this is an independent inquiry, there is very little doubt where the harshest possible condemnation ought to go.

If supporters got into the Broomloan without tickets, examine that. If the security operation failed, examine that. Were there failures in stewarding? By all means, examine them. If the host club had responsibilities it failed to discharge properly, examine those as well.

But what made this an exceptional incident was the violence of the home support, and no independent inquiry is going to airbrush that out of the narrative in the way the media has tried to do here.

After Hampden in 2016, Ibrox wanted the report challenged because it did not deliver the clean, one-sided verdict they had hoped for. During Covid, they demanded an independent investigation because they didn’t like the decision the other clubs had made. Then it failed to convince the clubs to back them. More recently, they have lost battles over sanctions, ticket conditions and now the principle that their supporters do not get to exist outside the behavioural norms the rest of us uphold without paying a price for it.

This is not the record of a club that bends the authorities to its will.

It is the record of a club that wages war through a compliant media but is all bark and no bite. They bluster as Trump sometimes does, but without the stature to make any of it stick. Their fans may believe that the club is hatching some great plan in secret and “biding its time,” but the truth is simpler. They have lost this one as they have lost so many others, and there is damn all they can do about it.

There is an old truth in Scottish football that Ibrox power is often more psychological than real. The myth of influence is stronger than the influence itself. For years, too many people behaved as though a statement from that club was a thunderclap. In reality, many of them are just weather reports from inside the same permanent storm.

The bark is fierce. The bite is inconsequential. Ibrox thinks of itself as a club with teeth. A Yorkshire terrier has teeth. Sometimes they even break the skin.

That is why Celtic were right to hold their position over the Union Brats and the coming derby. That is why the SPFL ruling mattered.

It showed, once again, that noise is not authority. Celtic made a security assessment. The league did not overturn it. The Ibrox club complained, vowed to fight, and then rolled over and accepted the allocation under the conditions set.

That is not strength. That is capitulation, however they dress it up. Over and over again, the more delusional elements of their support convince themselves that secret plans are in motion to destroy the forces arrayed against them. Time after time, the Ibrox club is revealed as weak and pathetic.

So, it was here, and I know why. That club has scared itself to death.

So, the SFA review will run its course. We should welcome that. Let it go wherever the evidence takes it. Let it be broad and detailed. Celtic were entitled to a large allocation, and the SFA gave us one that was fair.

Let the inquiry ask hard questions of both clubs, Police Scotland, the SFA, stewards, stadium management and every group involved. But when the report comes back, let nobody pretend we have not seen the next move before.

Because we know that move by heart.

If the report suits Ibrox, they will praise its seriousness. If it does not, they will question its basis. Should the report punish Celtic, they will call it accountability. If it highlights failures on their side and seeks to punish them, they will squeal that the process was tainted, perhaps even claim it was fixed, and most of the media will back them.

That is how this has worked for years. What always remained a mystery was why they put themselves in this position over and over again. Now we know. They have to perform for their supporters. They have to go through the motions of trying to project strength. But they never expect to win. On the contrary, they don’t believe they can.

See, for all the noise, all the statements, all the demands and all the threats, the past eight or nine years have taught us something important.

When the Ibrox club takes on the governing bodies, it very often loses before the fight even properly starts. Most of the time, it was never in a position to win, because most of its grievances really are moronic paranoia and wholly without merit.

Still, it fumes, postures and demands. It sometimes gets a meeting. Occasionally, it gets a hearing. More often, it gets told no, or the hearing finds against them. Then the grievance machine starts cranking up the support once more.

But nothing ever happens beyond a bit of bluster. Ibrox threatens to go over the edge, but never actually goes that far.

Why? Because they are afraid.

They are not as strong as they project themselves to be. They are no longer the centre of the football universe. Over on their forums, where they really do believe that Scottish football is run by Celtic, for the benefit of Celtic, they cannot understand why they cannot overcome our influence. The irony is, that’s exactly why. This exists as nothing but a fantasy in their heads, and as long as they believe it, they can’t defeat it.

Remember; if you live in a fairytale, you need to be afraid of dragons. We are the dragon they created out of whole cloth. We are nowhere near that powerful in reality and we’ve all said this over and over again.

If only they lived in reality. But in their mad fantasy, the conspiracy is not only real, it is much stronger than they are and it is everywhere.

It is hidden in committees, dodgy fixture lists, referees, reports, investigations, media coverage and every defeat they cannot accept came about because they just aren’t good enough. It’s always the conspiracy, the conspiracy, the conspiracy and they have built it so large, and fed it for so long, that it now terrifies them.

That is why they back down so often. Not because they respect the process. Not because they accept reality. But because, inside the story they tell themselves, the power of the vast force arrayed against them is just too strong to overcome.

This is the real Espanyolification of Ibrox. This sense of powerlessness in the face of the Great Conspiracy of the Unseen Fenian Hand. A conspiracy they invented. This is the monster they raised themselves.

How the Hell can they expect to beat it when they feed it every day?

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