Anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the Scottish media knows that the notion of Rangers supporters manning the desks at newspapers is not paranoid fiction – it’s farcical fact.
There could be many explanations for this – sheer juvenile pettiness being the least sinister and perhaps most plausible. Fortunately, though, there are two things in favour of those who would draw attention to the naked and idiotic level of imbalance in reporting Celtic and Rangers. Firstly, with notable exceptions, the average sports journalist in Scotland has about as much intelligence as fashion sense and that is displayed with a heck of a lot of, gold, aftershave and hair gel.
Secondly, they provide written evidence of their partiality in the shape of their bemusing observations. For example, let us suppose that newspapers were confidently predicting that a Scottish club would sign a player - Julien Faubert, for argument’s sake – and that player went on to sign for West Ham for a significantly higher fee than was offered by a club like, say, Rangers.
Would you expect a tabloid to think of this as headline news or choose to splash with the “exclusive” that another pop at signing Carlos Cuellar was on the cards? Curiously, newspapers such as the Sunday Mail seem to prefer to lead with flimsy speculation than hard news – that the transfer coup that had been touted was no more pie in the sky.
Meanwhile, another tabloid prefers to claim that Steven Naismith will sign for a fee that had already been rejected by Kilmarnock. In fairness, if Celtic decline to make a bid for Naismith, there is some possibility that he will start next season at Ibrox, with the small proviso that Rangers find the money to offer some realistic fee. And for the record, bidding £4m for a player who you know won’t move for less than £6m does not indicate an ability to pay big money – Gretna could offer £100m for Ronaldinho if they wished (much like Rangers’ previous “attempt” to sign Ronaldo).
These pundits are fooling only themselves and Rangers supporters desperate to believe in the tooth fairy. Who knows – maybe tomorrow there will be a shilling under Walter Smith’s pillow.
