Keith Jackson: It's time Celtic & Rangers played the game.. and not the galleries

[ian1964 10,761]

AS the row over Peter Lawwell's Celtic AGM comments rumbles on, KEITH JACKSON reckons its time both sides of the Old Firm stopped the grandstanding and concentrated on their own priorities.

 

 

 

LIKE Alan Partridge, Scottish football is bouncing back.

 

In just 10 months Gordon Strachan has taken this team of ours and stopped it from being a

laughing stock.

 

As a result of all his hard work, Scotland are no longer driving from Norwich to Dundee in their bare feet, gorging on assorted Toblerones.

 

Friday’s 0-0 draw with the USA at Hampden may hardly have been inspirational but even so it was yet more proof that Strachan has us on the road to recovery.

 

His players are not losing games against supposedly vastly superior opponents, even when performing well below their own best standards. That’s progress and it comes at a time when things are looking up.

 

All over the country, talented young players are emerging at club level and thriving with the

responsibility of first-team football.

 

Stuart Armstrong has just earned his first call-up to Strachan’s full squad while Ryan Gauld and Stevie May will soon be knocking on the door.

 

At last, after years of internal vandalism, we’re getting our own house back in some sort of order.

 

It’s not immaculate but no longer does it make us cringe with embarrassment.

 

Until, that is, someone goes and mentions the Old Firm. I did it once but I think I got away with it. Oh no wait, that will be the sound of a thousand emails cascading into my inbox. A deluge of dementedness.

 

“Don’t call us the Old Firm. We don’t want anything to do with that other mob.”

 

They may hate the living daylights out of one another but what they do share – in fact what binds them together – is the capacity for ferocious bampottery.

 

Every comment passed in public about one side or the other is picked apart forensically by supporters of both. Often the throwing of these titbits results in an online feeding frenzy, where all reason and logic are the first to be devoured.

 

It has been this way since the invention of the internet.

 

But, just lately, the landscape around Glasgow’s uneasy neighbours has become noticeably darker and poisonous.

 

Which is why Peter Lawwell, of all people, should have displayed better judgment than to poke a big stick into this hornet’s nest at Celtic’s agm on Friday.

 

By gratuitously branding Rangers Rory Bremner FC, Lawwell sent this bitter little world into meltdown.

 

Lawwell’s words were a nod and a wink to the most extremist element of his club’s support and, in a way, a green light for them to pursue their own dubious agendas. Sound familiar? It should do.

 

Because it was not that long ago that a certain big-handed Yorkshireman was doing precisely the same thing to win over the masses at the other side of this never so deeply divided city.

 

It’s called grandstanding and, at a time when emotions are so volatile and feelings so raw, it’s a dangerous road for either of these two clubs to be going down, never mind both of them at once. In opposite directions.

 

The sooner this pair remember that their purpose in life is to play the game, not the galleries, then perhaps the rest of us might be able to get on with the business of helping Scottish football back towards a state of good health rather than constantly being forced to rubberneck by these ceaseless attention seekers.

 

And yet no sooner had Lawwell pressed the button on Friday (successfully diverting attention away from an awkward internal debate about paying his employees a living wage in the process) than Rangers responded with a blast of their own.

 

You could almost hear them inside their Ibrox bunker working out the strategy, above the clicking of a PR guru’s Cuban heels.

 

“Right, where’s that statement slaughtering Celtic and Lawwell. That’s genius. Punters will love it.”

 

Talk about stage-managed rabble rousing? It’s almost as if the current remnants of this Rangers board are being given PR advice from the very same strategical experts who presented Craig Whyte to the world as a billionaire and told him how to go about winning friends and

influencing people.

 

Oh, wait a minute. They are.

 

Yes, the very same people who said the Daily Record was lying when it first revealed what Whyte was up to with the club’s season tickets – a full seven months before his ruinous business plan tipped the club into administration.

 

Whoever said motivation doesn’t grow on trees clearly hasn’t gone for a stroll down Edmiston Drive since Whyte stuffed the taxman for £15million under the cover of dark arts.

 

That’s the truth of the matter. Whyte plunged Rangers under and his scandalous behaviour has left a black mark on the very soul of this football club which continues to operate at Ibrox, in blue shirts with the same badges and crests.

 

Whyte was a near-death experience all right but Rangers live on. The real nature of the problem facing Rangers today is not that they have ceased to exist (they are still here after all) but rather they have become unrecognisable from their former selves.

 

And to that end, Lawwell had a point. Like Bremner’s Tony Blair, today’s Rangers are a flimsy

impersonation of the real thing.

 

But none of that is the business of Celtic’s chief executive, who would surely be better off concentrating on his own club’s continued dominance, especially now that BT Sport are doubling the value of a ticket into the Champions League.

 

Lawwell was right when he said Celtic are now a stand-alone club. They have proved they do not need Rangers in order to survive and to prosper. The less of UEFA’s loot they have to share, the stronger they will become.

 

Rangers, for their part, face a struggle just to keep HMS Ibrox from sinking for a second time.

 

Let them both get on with it, preferably as far apart from one another as is possible in this twisted little world. In the meantime, just don’t mention the Old Firm.

[der Berliner 3,808]

What Jackson does is grandstanding too, but I doubt he notices it.

 

Lawwell was right when he said Celtic are now a stand-alone club. They have proved they do not need Rangers in order to survive and to prosper. The less of UEFA’s loot they have to share, the stronger they will become.

 

They have proved that they do not need Rangers? Have they? I wonder if this journalist would have checked the financial results of Penn State without the CL millions? Has he checked the dwindling grey-green horde that swept into the Scumhut ... or rather not ... last season? Whether he noticed that it took a 90+ minute goal to save them their current CL-dream?

 

Whether he notices that only one club in Scotland profitted from Rangers' fall and is not exactly noted for being as gratious and charitable to the rest of the ailing Scottish game ... a game they reconstructed to the club's own desires?

 

As for grandstanding ... you could all put it into one bracket, of course. Yet, had Jackson looked hard enough, he would have noted the difference in quality here. Green was the first who spoke up against the corrupt SPL and SFA. Only to get the masses behind him? Jackson should rather talk about the SPL's and SFA's plans to rip Rangers of titles galore before taking Green to the pillory. But to do that you'd need to be a proper journalist.

[Super Cooper 0]

It’s almost as if the current remnants of this Rangers board are being given PR advice from the very same strategical experts who presented Craig Whyte to the world as a billionaire and told him how to go about winning friends and

influencing people.

 

Oh, wait a minute. They are.

 

Yes, the very same people who said the Daily Record was lying when it first revealed what Whyte was up to with the club’s season tickets – a full seven months before his ruinous business plan tipped the club into administration.

 

This a dig at Irvine? Certainly reads that way.

[andy steel 0]

Well, I like a laugh of a Monday morning, so fair play to Jackson.

 

No doubt, in his campaign against 'stirring the hornet's nest', 'grandstanding' and doing away with bampottery, he will be marching into the Record office this morning to demand the end of the 'Hotline', which has, for decades, featured all of the above. He will be holding a mass meeting in the car park to insist that writers who have earned a living since before I was born doing all the things he berates Mr Lawwell for doing be sacked forthwith; given that it is 'dangerous', we can scarce have one rule for The Record and another for fitba team.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with the points raised in this article, but from a Daily record writer? Come on.

[Darthter 542]

It’s almost as if the current remnants of this Rangers board are being given PR advice from the very same strategical experts who presented Craig Whyte to the world as a billionaire and told him how to go about winning friends and

influencing people.

 

Oh, wait a minute. They are.

 

Yes, the very same people who said the Daily Record was lying when it first revealed what Whyte was up to with the club’s season tickets – a full seven months before his ruinous business plan tipped the club into administration.

 

This a dig at Irvine? Certainly reads that way.

 

Was it not Jackson & the DR that initially reported about Craig Whyte, the billionaire with wealth off the radar???

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/craig-whyte-profile-the-scots-billionaire-1076110

[bluebear54 0]

Classic example of pot calling the kettle black journalism.

[Super Cooper 0]

Was it not Jackson & the DR that initially reported about Craig Whyte, the billionaire with wealth off the radar???

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/craig-whyte-profile-the-scots-billionaire-1076110

 

I believe it was but perhaps this is Keith now telling Toxic his info was dreadfully wrong?

[redford 0]

Jackson also neglects to mention the real issue with the "joke". Lawwell is also a member of the governing bodies professional game board.

[Guest Night Owl]

Classic example of pot calling the kettle black journalism.

 

Exactly.... first thought was ( What have the journalists been doing these past two year, playing the game or playing to the gallery ? )

[ian1964 10,761]

When these guys keep writing about Rangers it's ok,however when their articles are challenged by fans they then say it's time to move on!,pathetic