Originally posted by James Traynor
For months now there has been a savagery. The game has been ripping itself apart all in the name of fair play. Or was it sporting integrity?
Forgive me, the reasons for the crisis that threatens to destroy Scottish football have been lost somewhere in the lust to tear and shred one club. It's as though a century of hatred and probably jealousy have erupted.
And the handful of reasoned souls left in the game are fighting a losing battle to cap the flow.
No, sorry Jim, forgive me.
Talk about trying to muddy the waters over what is, at its core a pretty simple issue. Don't go pretending that this suddenly isn't about fair play or sporting integrity, or even just a tiny wee shred of balance in a game which has been devoid of it for decades.
The reasons for the crisis haven't been remotely lost on most, although sadly they appear to have been lost on you in your hunt for a few more readers on your sinking ship.
For what it's worth, the reasons are as follows:
- Rangers used dodgy practices over many years to pay for players they couldn't afford otherwise, in the process gathering a whole host of league and cup wins
- Rangers manipulated and cajoled an open-arms willing press to turn a blind eye to their over-powerful influence on the game
- Rangers played fast and loose with other people's money, leaving a trail of creditors in their wake in their pursuit of superiority in Scottish football
The BBC investigation, the SFA, UEFA, the courts - at every turn there is on guilty party - Rangers and those associated with them.
And pretending to be in a handful of reasoned souls doesn't cut it any more Mr Traynor - everyone knows you were bought in the succulent lamb culture by Mr Murray and his cohorts, and given that your opinion seems to change with the weather most of us will have a little more respect for those who've proven they're capable of taking a more impartial look at events. The Scottish papers, least of all the Record, shouldn't be attempting to take any kind of moral high ground here, they should be hanging their heads in shame. They've been caught out and should be quietly licking their wounds and learning lessons, not stumbling down the same old tired road with worthless words from corrupted men who are long past their sell-by date.
And the one thing which Traynor and his ilk, along with all those angry Rangers fans, conveniently fail to ask when they talk about a witch hunt is this: just what is it about Rangers Football Club that has elicited such a response from so many people at so many football clubs all across Scotland?
Are we all wrong?
Sorry Jim, but just because you have to talk about an issue every day doesn't mean the reasons for it have become clouded, it simply means you've become jaded, lost your way, become too accustomed to the succulent lamb, become rattled by the plummeting readership figures which make you more and more of an obsolete irrelevance in Scottish sport.
Simple facts, just in case you're struggling for them:
- Rangers as we knew them are gone. A new company may well come along and call itself a version of Rangers. That's fine, I have no issue with that. But they ought to be given the same treatment as everyone else. If you didn't shed tears for Clydebank and Gretna forgive us for being a little suspicious of your hollow care for the game now.
Football will always be skewed by competing agendas, by the lust for money and reward, by small men feeling important in expensive blazers and padded seats, by hangers-on, wannabees and never weres.
But let's at least make some kind of attempt and making it a wee bit fair along the way.
