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Showing posts from September, 2021

Show (victims of) Racism the Red Card

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 I'll apologise in advance but this isn't my usual style of article. This isn't a piece I've taken a day or two to think over. This isn't analysing the team or tonight's performance, that'll come. This is purely a reactive piece because I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed at the loss, I'm annoyed at the way we didn't leave a man on the post, I'm annoyed this looks like more than a slow start, but most of all I'm annoyed at the complete disregard UEFA give to its players and victims of racism. Sparta Prague were found guilty of their fans racially abusing Monaco's  Aurelien Tchouameni and ordered to play behind closed doors as a result. Now if UEFA really cared about racism they would have kicked them out of the tournament. There is no place for racism in football. Yet UEFA felt a behind closed doors game was the correct punishment. Fair enough. But then, inexplicably, UEFA decide that this is too much punishment and decide that it would be a

Just Win Baby!

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 The NFL fans among you will probably recognise the phrase "Just win baby!" as a famous quote from former Oakland/LA/Oakland again/Las Vegas Raiders owner Al Davis. Well after last week's loss to Lyon, deserved, and then a completely lackluster flag day ceremony that was matched on the field in a 1-1 draw at home with Motherwell, that was the phrase running through my head this week. We've not had the best of starts to the season, disappointment against  Malmö, defeat to Dundee unite and then a draw with Motherwell has me in the mode of I just want to see wins pile up now. Our rivals have lost 3 league games in the opening 6 and after blowing  the opportunity to go 6 points clear on Sunday we had to be looking at the table and wondering why we're only 4 points clear of them. It's time to start a good run of wins and kick the team on. This is a team we know can perform, last year they looked untouchable, and it would be strange if they've regressed this muc

Get off my lawn

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 Thursday sure brought about a lot of talk for Rangers, or, more accurately, talk about Rangers. It saw what should have been a straight forward European night get twisted into another "lets pile on Rangers" event. Some deserved, some undeserved, but at Rangers you expect nothing less. To paraphrase the great Ric Flair "The players want to be with Rangers, the teams want to be Rangers". Bad Press Thursday morning saw reports that members of the Rangers support had spray painted a piece of Rangers themed art on the Lyon team bus. This was met with the usual histrionics in the land of social media. Now don't get me wrong, it was a silly thing to do and it gave Rangers' detractors another stick to beat the club with, but in the grand scheme of things who really cares? It's a bit of paint on a bus. It's noise the club could have done without, especially right now, and it gave the faux offended something to complain about for another day but nobody got hu

These Things Happen

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At the start of this season, Rangers announced that any media outlet wishing to have access to the club would no longer be afforded prime seats at Ibrox, regular opportunities to interview the manager and players, or hospitality for free anymore. Access that they had grown used to, to then turn round and more often than not print lies about the club, or attack players like Morelos, often in articles that were very close to, if not outright, xenophobic in the minimum and, in some cases, racially fuelled.  Having had enough, and seeing a potential revenue maker, Rangers announced that going forward if companies wanted media access then they would need to pay a fee of £25k. A decision that has seen the Rangers support split, some seeing it as a chance to show the mainstream media that they need Rangers more than Rangers needs them, and others worried this leaves Rangers open to criticism that they are attempting to control the narrative and that unbiased coverage is important. It's ea