WHEN THE BLIND EYE STOPS TURNING

Growing up in Glasgow can give a person many views the rest of the world would see as blinkered. 

Whether it’s the famous old ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’ slogan or a freezing cold bottle of Irn Bru and a roll and sausage (square, mind) being the best hangover cure in the world, over time people mature and they begin to see things as they really are. 
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, myths and legends that will forever live on in the minds of those who simply refuse to believe the truth, no matter how much evidence to the contrary lies before them. 

Many of you may think I am simply referring to the same club/new club continuity myth and other fantasies emitting from Ibrox via Level 5 PR, The Daily Record and other compliant media outlets. I’m not. 

There has been a monumental shift in the media since 2012, albeit not the type of shift that was and is still needed, but a noteworthy change nonetheless. 

It used to be quite fashionable among the Scottish press to ridicule stories circulating on social media, referring to the sources as “Internet bampots” (Hugh Keevins – Radio Clyde) and “Celtic fans out to stir up trouble with nonsense” (take your pick). 

Fast-forward to now and we have columns full of tweets and quotes from fans and bloggers, the majority of journalists and pundits also now have their own twitter accounts. 

One can’t help but wonder if things would have turned out differently for the now deceased Rangers had the media given accounts such as RangersTaxCase and CharlotteFakes any sort of respect at all. 

With newspaper sales plummeting and their credibility shrinking day by day, it’s clear the SMSM are clutching at straws to retain an audience. 

The Celtic fans don’t buy them because of the lies they printed and the rangers fans will stop buying them the more truth they print.

As Fergus McCann once said, “Karma, you are one sexy bitch.”

Hail Hail

ENERGY DRINK COMPANY CONSIDERS RANGERS INVESTMENT

With the fifth anniversary of the liquidation of Rangers Football Club 1872-2012 on the horizon, there finally seems to be some promising news on the future finances of the new club. 
This weekend, 8,000 loyal fans traveled to Germany to watch the new entity take on RB Leipzig, who currently lie second in the Bundesliga, in a friendly match while the SPFL is on its winter break. While many see this as merely a game to keep the players fitness levels up over the break, reports have suggested that this match was a shop-window for investors. The rumours were that energy drinks giant Red Bull, the main sponsors of the Leipzig club, were considering investing in the new Rangers, which would give them the huge amount of funding needed to stop Celtic’s total domination of Scottish football for the foreseeable future. 

This was met with unbridled joy from the loyal Rangers fans, who have watched their new club battle through the lower leagues in Scotland for the last five years, with no trophies won worth talking about. 

There was, however, some confusion over the source of the investment that had been offered to the Ibrox club. A spokesperson from Red Bull said, “We have no idea where this story has came from. The idea that Red Bull would invest in a club with no history, no trophies and fans that would rather stump up a collective £2,000,000 plus on a day out in Germany than put it towards the rebuilding of the many areas of their club that need sorted out, is ludicrous.”

The confusion was cleared up soon after our conversation with Red Bull, when we received an email from another energy drinks company stating, “We at Emerge are happy to consider investment in The Rangers. A cheaper version of another brand, cheaply put together and with a target audience of unemployed blue-vally swallyers is right up our street.”

THE CURIOUS CASE OF BILLY THE BOTTON

In the days of the now deceased Rangers Football Club 1872-2012 (IL), their fans enjoyed years of success due to the clubs financial superiority over the rest of Scottish football. This gave the average bluenose plenty of ammo to win football-based arguments, it also gave the mainstream media a target audience that was as easy to reach as David Murray on an escalator, turning Glasgow based tabloids into mere fanzines, authored by journalists so biased they were referred to by much better people than this author as ‘fans with typewriters’.The aforementioned Murray had his media lapdogs well trained by the time OldCo were but half the way to equalling Celtic’s record of nine successive league titles in a row. Unquestioned by the media and unchallenged by their supporters, Murray was given a free pass for over a decade, allowing him to destroy the club through a string of reckless financial practices and end 140 years of history. 

Since the reformation of the Ibrox based club, the continuity myth has been argued quite vigorously by their supporters, now affectionately referred to as zombies by the rest of football fans in Scotland and beyond. However, recent times have seen the debating skills of the average zombie deteriorate somewhat, mainly due to their many failings on and off the pitch. 

The old Rangers would never have had a guy like Mike Ashley in control of so much of their merchandising rights, nor would they be reliant on soft loans from outside sources or loan players on the downward curve of their careers to keep them going until the end of the season. They certainly would never have allowed Celtic to make public the fact that a £40,000 bill for damage caused by their fans to the toilets at Celtic Park had still not been paid some months later, underlining the overall state of the new clubs finances. 

A lot of the goings on around Ibrox these days are anything but alarming to the NewCo loyal, players waiting two weeks for scans highlights the lack of decent medical facilities, only borrowing players from the English league shows a limited scouting set-up and a severe lack of transfer funds. The once compliant media also seem to have had enough of the amateurish way the Govan club have been behaving, with many journalists beginning to question if rather than when Rangers will be able to close the gap between themselves and the champions. Add the issues of stadium repairs, average-at-best performances, failed marquee signings and a chairman who is reportedly “only there to make sure he gets what he is owed from losing millions when OldCo died” and you are left with not many argument winning statements. These days they end arguments by making jokes about child abuse, threats, intimidation, trolling, basically anything but admit the truth and do as Celtic fans did in 1994 – save their club. 

On the 50th anniversary of Celtic lifting the European Cup in Lisbon, the team are close to matching the Lisbon Lions’ record for consecutive games without losing, they currently sit 19 points clear at the top of the league with a game in hand and are 33 goals better off than their blue neighbours. It really is no wonder they’re blue. 

Hail Hail.