Very Sad News: Ibrox’s reputation will suffer years after their post-Celtic game meltdown.
Ibrox has launched a significant PR campaign over the past year, which the media enthusiastically embraced and portrayed as advantageous not only for their team but also for Scottish football in its entirety.
The media’s justification included the idea that having a rival to Celtic’s supposed supremacy at the top would somehow benefit the game. This is not a novel concept; despite its discreditability, people persist in asserting that we are somehow controlling the entire sport. The other theory that supported this one was that Ibrox “belongs” at the top table, which is a ridiculous and potentially harmful notion in my opinion.
Just so you know, those same individuals would say the same thing about Celtic, and I think that’s a poor idea too. For this reason, I have long advocated doing away with the yearly charade in which the two clubs alternate executive committee positions as if they were ours by default. Such a right ought not to exist. One should earn a place at the table rather than be handed one.
Despite all of this discussion about entitlement, the Ibrox club has never been regarded as a leader in our national sport. Because of this, the current board has spent the last year trying to position itself as a responsible partner and reaching out to form coalitions now that individuals like King and Park are no longer in the way.
While the individuals whose names were all over the dubious dossier and the Cinch scandal were in command, there could be no reconciliation; nevertheless, as soon as they were removed, or at least purportedly removed, Ibrox’s public relations campaign got underway. It represented a “new beginning.”
The media devoured it. They recommenced discussing the Ibrox club’s “rightful place” in Scottish football. The Celtic websites were the only ones to dismiss this as a myth and caution that no one should be duped because, naturally, these were the same Ibrox directors who had issued a warning about settling scores and made it apparent what they intended to do.
Keith Jackson was spitting this morning because of how completely humiliated he and others had been by the club over the last week. Fools. Fools. His piece, which sounds a lot like several you may have read before, even down to the claim that the club has acted in a “Trumpian” manner, is clearly influenced by our websites rather than being a direct copy of them, much like Keown’s piece from the other day. and that has to hurt the worst.
If you were one of those guys, you might have to use the Celtic bloggers’ vernacular to vent your frustration at being taken for a complete moron. I’ll read Jackson’s article later today or maybe tomorrow because there are some things in there that really need to be scrutinized. For now, though, let’s just agree that he is right when he describes their recent behavior as reputationally disastrous, even though he completely rejects the possibility that he and others may have contributed to this behavior in the past.
I wrote over the weekend about how this is not something we should let the media get away with; there are a lot of them slithering on it at the moment, arguing that Ibrox was correct and that they would have had support up until they mentioned Collum specifically, all the while ignoring the fact that this was clearly all about Collum from the beginning.
The true nature of the goal was never really concealed. If the hacker failed to see that until it was too late and they had already effectively thrown their support behind the club, then it is their own fault. Within football, there was no denying the nature of this cruel little game, and other clubs responded appropriately.
Not a single club offered them support. Not even one. Many people have serious worries about VAR, while many others are upset about the lack of openness. Not a single club agreed with the Ibrox club, even though it seemed like they were just posing “legitimate questions.” Since everyone in such clubs was already aware of the true nature of this.
I’m not sure how “successful” Ibrox had been in attempting to establish connections with other teams and in projecting an air of stability and sanity within its walls. However, I am aware that in the previous seven days, any progress they gained has been dramatically reversed, making it all seem pointless and pushing them further from the mainstream than they have ever been. Other clubs view the choice to release the Collum story to their “official fan media partners” as almost unbelievably reckless, as Jackson and others have shown.
Furthermore, this cannot be fixed, at least not in the near to medium future. Every time the media departments of rival teams hear that another story is about to break from Ibrox, they have to groan with annoyance since it is the source of so much contrived crisis and perpetual drama.
When it’s not official harassment, it’s an attempt to topple the highest levels of the SFA and SPFL, and when it is, it’s tampering with business contracts just because it can. Over the past few years, we’ve seen everything from resignation demands to dubious dossiers, and nobody sane truly believed those days were behind us. yet the club’s supporters in the media yearned to. Again, I tell it: these folks are mugs who are eager to be duped.
Fortunately, the clubs were always aware of this. Years will pass before they trust anything that comes from the club. Years will pass before the harm from the previous week is restored. However, it can never, ever be reversed. It’s a massive self-inflicted wound that exposes them at their worst and serves as a reminder to everyone who needed it of what’s truly under Ibrox’s cool and collected exterior.
