Outrage, seethe and gnashing – Rangers must be winning

Nations across the globe use a common method to track the results and performances within their respective sporting competitions. These are commonly known to the world as league tables and, while they are perfect in their purpose, they aren’t always needed in Scottish Football.  

Here in our particular little footballing backwater there is another factor which appears to be an undisputable barometer of how things are going at the top of the table – noise.

You see, when Rangers are a mess and in the midst of another banter period there is silence and indifference perhaps broken only by light mockery. However, when we are winning, my goodness, the noise reaches a deafening din of conspiracy, hypocrisy and faux outrage.

Each Rangers win at present is met with the angry gnashing of teeth. Our result in Lisbon, we were told, wasn’t all that good despite the fact they’ve never lost a Europa League game at home.

Textbook red cards are no long red cards. Fouls in the box are no longer penalties. And John Beaton is the Masonic overlord ensuring Celtic are held down where they belong.

Our recent victory against Hibernian perhaps saw this noise reach a crescendo. After yet another defeat to Rangers their fans decided that they could no longer tolerate the away support and pressured their board to act, and they did. The away allocation is now set to be cut at Easter Road so that their home fans are not subjected to nasty songs from the travelling support.

Of course the ones from the home end are fine – I mean, why wouldn’t they be – but definitely can’t have it from the away end. Don’t be silly.

Hibs fans of course are amongst the most decorated in the country when it comes to awards for misbehavior. Whether it be glass bottles, corkscrews, vapes, pies or whatever, they’ve thrown them.

They’ve invaded the pitch en masse, they’ve had individuals square up to opposition captains and they’ve even mocked the Ibrox disaster by defacing our seats with ‘66’.  It really is a fantastically scummy array of football fanbase faux pas. But let’s not have a bad song, they don’t like that.

This of course is not to defend the song in question but rather to highlight the hypocrisy of the outcry. While Martin Boyle was injured and receiving treatment, he was rather crassly serenaded by the Rangers support. ‘How could they sing about someone that’s seriously injured?’ they asked… right before bursting into song about our late Queen being ‘in a box’.

As far as hypocrisy goes, the outrage didn’t even have time to foam from the mouth before it was smothered by the equally crass response.

In true ‘Rangers are winning’ fashion this saw soapboxes being mounted and tubs being thumped. Our good old friend from the BBC, Chris McLaughlin, tweeted above the governing bodies and police responding and is now talking about strict liability.

Now a sporadic and irregular commentator of Scottish football, he of course saw fit to mention this game while he remained deafeningly silent on a knife / corkscrew being thrown inches away from Lawrence Shankland at the Edinburgh Derby.

Quelle surprise. I mean, it’s not like he was banned for such one-eyed reporting before, is it?

He was joined on the now creaking soapbox by the blustering Ian Blackford MP. The SNP representative for Ross, Skye and Lochaber of course shares the selectiveness of McLaughlin. As a Hibs fan and a politician he made no comment on pitch invasions, glass bottles or other missiles being thrown at opposition players.

You’d think he would want his club to get their own house in order first and foremost, no? Maybe he’s taken his blinkered approach from the First Minister who of course has previous in this department. Party policy and all that.

It’s reminiscent of the ’55’ season where government and politicians adopted their “Rangers could have done more” attitude to prevent gatherings many miles away in another area of the city while the actual government made no preparations for this at all.

Coincidence? Nope, Rangers were winning then too.

And so here we are. As Philippe Clement’s team chase domestic silverware and a European dream, the noise is being cranked up from all around. The truth is nobody cared when Rangers weren’t winning. Nobody cared when we were a mess. The only reason you hear these comments now is because of one simple fact – Rangers are winning again.

None of the above should be taken as point-scoring. Some of our fans are far from angels at times and I’m sure opposition supporters could send over a dossier of incidents to rival those above. But that’s not the point. The point is the hollowness of the dramatized anger. They’re not really upset at a song or an away support. If they were this would have been sorted years ago. They’re upset because Rangers aren’t losing anymore. That’s the crux of it.

Real pressure is now being applied to the officials following the concession of Celtic’s first domestic penalty, in March. Agreed it was a soft one but in the grand conspiracy theory it was more than cancelled out by the one they received at 0-0. But none of that matters and the commentary thereafter would have you believe it never happened in the first place.

Brendan Rogers even credited the wrong official with making the decisions on the day. Why? Because it distracts from his own failings and whips up the tinfoil brigade in his own support. And given the reaction has been more about referees than dropped points, it was PR genius from his part, even if it was at the expense of John Beaton and potentially his windows.

We could end up in a really sad situation in Scotland where away supporters become a thing of the past, at least as we once knew them. Rangers have of course played a role in that with the Old Firm issue still unresolved but at the end of the day, unlike Easter Road and other venues, our stadium isn’t sitting half-empty while cutting allocations. Sure it may appease some thin-skinned home supporters but it’s at the cost of the spectacle itself as stands opposite cameras have rows of empty seats in full view.

Philippe Clement said in a recent interview that he won’t look at the league table until May. The good news for him is he may not have to, he’ll simply have to listen for the howls and cries from the rest of Scottish football and he’ll know if we are where we need to be.

*If* we do win this league, a pair of ear plugs would be a very wise investment. As for Hibs, people in half-empty glass houses shouldn’t throw vapes. Or pies. Or bottles. Or knives.

Over to Rangers. Keep on winning and crank up the volume.