The Govanhill Gub
The year two thousand and twenty-one started with us toasting our absent friends (those lost in 1961 included) on the second of January. It should always be this way. The empty Ibrox meant there would be no synchronised coughing from the filth like ten years previously.
To mark the occasion on the park we helped ourselves to another three points at the hands of you-know-who and with what was becoming the obligatory clean sheet into the bargain. Although we could be forgiven for thinking on reading the rags’ take on the proceedings the following morning that we had committed some act of footballing grand larceny.
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Apparently if you happen to force the opposition goalkeeper into making a couple of saves in the first 20 minutes, this equates to total domination of the match. Well according to Timbo that is and of course their fellow travellers and cheerleaders in the press.
The bottom line is, this Ibrox Express which had started the season at a steady pace, maintained that momentum through the autumn was beginning to take on the impression of a runaway train and boy were we lapping it up.
So, if the month of January had started wonderfully, there was more mirth still to come. The Yahoos, being the law unto themselves, that they tell the SPFL they are, decided that their jolly to Dubai was going full steam ahead (steamboats would have been more apt) and as was subsequently proved, Covid protocols were breached. So while we all had a laugh-a-long at Lenny and a chortle at Captain Kebab breaking the rules, the most important issue for me came to the fore and involved their big preposterous provo, Shane (O’im here for da ten) Duffy.
Now whether the rumours, that he’d had enough of the shenanigans in the Middle East are true or not, they are immaterial. Only one issue matters. Duffy left Dubai and came back to Scotland on a commercial flight via England. So basically, Duffy should have been self-isolating for anywhere between 7-10 days. Or whatever the Gov’t rules were at the time.
Within days of coming back to Scotland, the Yahoos were back on home turf and had a fixture against Hibs to fulfil. So, Duffy would miss this rescheduled match you would think due to the S-I rules? That would be a no. Not only was he allowed to play. Hibs were threatened by penalties and sanctions by the SPFL for having the temerity to question the illegality of a club and player being allowed to trample all over these rules. For the record, justice prevailed and the yahoos dropped two much needed points.
What is happening here in Scottish football isn’t about there being an underbelly that ripples and operates quietly in the background. What we have here in this corrupt hole is a malevolent dark cloud that oversees and dictates everything that happens based on their whims and any potential benefit to them at all times. But more of that later.
Not that we didn’t have our own flirting with madness at the time when it comes to the C word. News emerged that four of our International Bright Young Things had decided to play trivial pursuit in one of their homes and brought their WAGS along with them. The players of course were in ‘the bubble’ due to their work, but the gals all added to the mix weren’t. Cue suspensions for our players. Which are the rules. We wanted to throttle our players for being so stupid, but that’s us.
Now I could be way wrong here and my maths out of whack, but I don’t think I’ve left anyone out when it comes to the amount of suspensions that were meted out to both Rangers and Celtic players because of Covid last season.
Celtic – Two, due to one of their players, Bolingoli, flying off to sunnier climes during an International break. The filth claimed they didn’t know he was out of town? Aye right! It was also decided that another Celtic player, Frimpong, could set up home with a female straight off the plane from America without so much as a mention.
Then there was the aforementioned full squad breaching Covid conditions abroad, mingling with fellow tourists and the like and their first team assistant coach admitted as much – Zero.
Rangers – Two players initially, Jones and Edmuson. – Sixteen (8 apiece) for going to a party. We then add in the Twenty-four for the aforementioned Fab four, albeit with 8 suspended. With these numbers in mind it is worth pointing out the Yahoos truly believe they have had a raw deal from the authorities when it comes to being punished for Covid related transgressions.
Instead of being shouted down at every turn, this mindset is ignored, catered to and mollycoddled in this sh1thole. They put me in mind of the legendary reply from Bing Crosby when asked back in the day what he thought of Frank Sinatra? Crosby replied; ”A voice like Sinatra’s comes along only once in a lifetime, but why did it have to be in mine’s?”
I know what he meant. I realise not everyone can be lucky enough to be a ‘Bear’, I realise that there are ‘Derby’ matches the world over and rivalry spills into, overzealous behaviour and malice. But why, oh why do we have to share oxygen, far less a country and city with these mentally unhinged cretins?
February saw the side in keep on keepin’ on mode with a slight hiccup at Hamilton. Despite the ever-increasing points gap, I think a good many of us still kept harking back to the post New Year collapses of the previous two years. But we were taking things a wee bit, too far as events would quickly prove.
Then another jewel was added to the crown of this most splendid of seasons. The yahoos lost at Ross County and that was basically the end of the little runt from Lurgan in the dugout. Like so many members of the Rangers support and indeed the rest of Scottish football I have my own memories of the hate and bigotry he brought to this wee hole in his own inimitable way.
It is suffice to say that when he was sacked (and be in no doubt, he was) he went secure in the knowledge that his own kind, the something inside so strong mob hated him in a way we simply didn’t or couldn’t. The re-writing of history with this runt has already begun. No sharks, metal or otherwise will be mentioned with regards to his being hounded out.
The Ides of March as they say were upon us. But the tides of our play on a regular basis and a defence, which would have made Scrooge swoon with its miserly displays, had turned too far for said Ides to make any difference to how the season would pan out. A routine 3-0 win v St Mirren on Saturday the 6th and the filth petering out, not with a bang but with a whimper at Tannadice the following day wrapped up the proceedings.
The title was coming home. There were none of the provisions that catered to the filth for the first five of their tainted titles in place this time around for them to fall back on. No one horse league. Then when they returned, their only realistic opponent still financially hamstrung. Then a season like last, with their opponent finally getting its act together and with good footballers in all areas of the park they had no answer. No zoom calls for us either.
All that was left was ending the league season unbeaten for the first and only time since 1898/99 and a Scottish Cup thrown in. Both should have been achieved, in the end only one was.
The first real hurdle in the SC, a home tie v the Yahoos was won in a canter. Although a couple more goals would have been nice just to highlight the gulf in class and some sort of payback for the last few years. We were home and dry in the quarters with us into injury time at Ibrox against the Saints from Perth when a collective, defensive brain fart turned our lot into a bunch of sinners. But there you go.
Thankfully, the quest for the unbeaten league record became a reality. A four goal tonking of Dolly at Ibrox in the final game at Ibrox brought the curtain down on a league campaign that started with us all in hopeful mode and ended with us utterly delirious and giddy with the splendour of it all.
And so to the celebrations, and they were always going to happen. Despite the restrictions at the time, and most certainly because of the trials and tribulations and unbridled hatred we had to endure from 2012 onwards, the support would most certainly be out in numbers.
To this effect, the club to approached Plod and the relevant authorities and asked that Ibrox be opened with a 20k capacity. This sensible approach would have helped keep our revellers and their jubilation and celebrations within the confines of the stadium and keep disruption as a whole off the streets. A common-sense solution you would think.
Of course, as you would expect the authorities and plod said no and the rest as they say is history. And a particularly murky part of history at that. The hatred of our club that infests the Natsi party from the top down was off and running and they all had their say in their condemnation of the Rangers support. The gloves were off and the malice was everywhere.
Now hundreds of articles could be written on the events of May 15th, 2021 by hundreds of different fans on the subject, so I’ll keep my thoughts boiled down to what I believe is the most important part. In their hatred and indecent haste to have a go and condemn the club and support, we had the then Justice Minister wanting Rangers players punished for alleged sectarian singing in the showers after the game.
He went public with all this before any charges were made. Useless and his party apparently didn’t need evidence for this. The vitriol that was all too sincere lasted for days. The letters pages were polluted with poison (Although the concern for the benches in George Sq was quite touching. Fake, insincere and a load of codswallop but touching all the same) and all on the basis of a fake video. A video they all knew to be a fake, but the hate was allowed to carry on regardless. Incredibly Sturgeon’s storm troopers allowed this to carry on, even though they had the evidence to put an end to the charade.
So here we had the flotsam and jetsam who run the SNP and their morals laid bare. One of the main bedrocks of law in a civilised society is the belief in the following; ‘Innocent Until Proven Guilty’. Yet here we had the Justice Minister, who just happens to be a Yahoo incidentally, throwing one of the main tenets that keep law abiding countries from chaos, out of the window.
It all unfolded because of the hatred of Rangers, Protestantism, The Union and Loyalism now ingrained into the very fabric of this wretched party. The actions and weasel words of Jimmy Krankie, Useless, Dornan and Co is a chilling insight into what life would be like under these rats and morons if we ever get to live under the rock that would be Scottish Independence.
If the summer of 2021 was a fun time, it was a bit like Springsteen’s take on cabal TV. A lot of channels but, ultimately, nothing was going on. Certainly not at Ibrox. There was a bit of a fanfare about John Lundstram coming to the club from newly demoted Sheffield Utd. I’d never heard of the guy or having watched him on MOTD saw anything of note that caught my eye. But such was my faith in the manager, I immediately thought, this might be another hidden gem we had unearthed. Oh, and a guy with a fancy name, from Zambia also signed. I don’t think I’ve missed many more in the grand scheme of things.
The new season started with a win over Livi. It wasn’t brilliant, it certainly wasn’t poor and gave no indication of the troubles, for want of a better word ,that were to unfold. An unexpected league reverse on match day #2 at Tannadice, shook us out of any complacency. Now I knew our unbeaten league run couldn’t and wouldn’t last but I never expected it to end so soon or at that sh1thole. Was there anything wrong at Ibrox? Something going on behind the scenes?
In Europe we were all delighted with being drawn against Malmo. Again, a mundane but adequate first half performance against the Swedes in the 1st leg was totally undone by a shambolic few minutes early in the second half when we shipped two goals in quick succession. Only a last gasp goal by us retrieved the situation. Or so we thought.
So, to the home leg at Ibrox. The place was rocking as we went a goal in front. It rocked still further, when the visitors had a man red carded before half time. This is the stuff. A goal up, a man up, another couple of goals would see us safely through. Or so we thought. Unbelievably, we shipped another two quick-fire goals, the second, from a throw-in catching the whole defence flat-footed. So that was that, another dismal, abysmal failure in Europe. Was there something happening we didn’t know about behind the scenes?
Before moving on, I do feel the press reaction to our failure to move a step nearer to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that the CL group represents is worth remembering. In previous years if the yahoos qualified, astronomical figures were trotted out to tell us how much they would be getting. When they failed these figures were toned down.
The day after our elimination, one of the teatime news Sports slots itemised what seemed like every single pound from every single match we’d be missing out on. Scottish football’s version of Bullseye with the darts very firmly thrown in our direction. ‘This is what you could have won, so GIRUY! Quite different from the way a report on Celtic being knocked out over the last few seasons was basically glossed over.
Domestically, we were still keeping our noses in front but some of the performances were leaving a lot to be desired. We needed John McLaughlin to make a great save from a plenty at Dens Park to a side that had looked like cannon fodder for the rest of the league. Motherwell at Ibrox, we should have been coasting but missed sitters and a late goal conceded and another two points were frittered away. There had to be something wrong somewhere.
October saw another two points squandered against Hearts at Ibrox in the exact same circumstances as those against Motherwell. But the game that tipped the scales in the supports’ mind came at the end of the month against Aberdeen at Ibrox. Twenty-four hours after the news that Walter Smith had passed away and the players still couldn’t raise their game? Sod asking the question any longer, there was something definitely, seriously ;.=gv wrong at Ibrox.
An answer of sorts came the following midweek when rumours emerged that with Aston Villa’s managerial job up for grabs our manager was very much in the running for the vacancy. Surely not? After all, Steven Gerrard had been pretty upfront to the point of being disrespectful to an interviewer for RTV on the very subject a few days beforehand. The rest as they is history.
The views on Steven Gerrard, and I’m taking FF as a barometer on this, is still very much a mixed bag. On one hand ‘he left us in the lurch, so sod him and Aston Villa’ is one. Then there’s the ‘we always knew he was leaving us’ and so forth. Both have their merits.
I’m going to sit on the fence. Yes, I was angry at the timing of his going away. But, on the other hand we did know he’d move sooner rather than later, However, what really did boil my piss was the offhand manner in how he explained away his toodling off. ‘I’ve kept to the remit of the job.’ Or words to that effect. Nah Mr G.I doubt it is ever in a manager’s remit that he can swan off in the middle of a season, especially in a season when the financial benefit of winning the title is so overwhelming and important, just as he likes and at the drop of a hat too.
However, being a fair-minded cove I think we have to weigh up the pros and cons when we think of our ex-manager and what he achieved at and for Rangers Football Club.
The pros – First, and the only thing that matters is Steven Gerrard took over an absolute shambles of a club and turned us from absolute dross to League Champions in three seasons. It could have happened sooner but for inexplicable and scarcely believed post New Year collapses in his first two seasons, but them’s the breaks. In doing so, he demolished the filth’s fabled, taken for granted tainted ten and ended the managerial career of the most repulsive, bigoted, little piece of slime ever to infect Scottish Football.
I don’t know about you, but he’s getting plus marks from me, big time.
In Europe he steered the club to football on the continent after Christmas, three seasons running for the first time since 1966/67 – 68/69. From Progres’ to feeling down, stuffed and frustrated at only getting a score draw away to Benfica, albeit, being a man to the good. Now that is progress!
The best European performance for me though, was the second half in Porto two seasons ago. We were playing in red that night and at times and what with our tight passing and our wee ‘triangles’ and running into spaces at pace, it truly did remind me of another British team who usually play in red and are famed throughout Europe. That is a bar that was set and has to be aimed for repeatedly and then bettered. However, meeting higher class opposition in the knock out rounds prove we still have a way to go.
The cons – Given the task set in the grand scheme of things, and with me scribbling this in a benevolent mood there’s not that many. Yup, it would have been nice to win a cup or two and a bauble would have helped offset the Jekyll and Hyde performances after the bells in 2019 and 2020 but for me we have to keep it in perspective.
I mean, we could usually salvage a cup in the Greig and Jock Wallace #2 eras. It hardly compensated for being also rans in the league to Dundee Utd and Aberdeen, far less the yahoos though, did it? Back in the day it took Rangers six long years to win a major domestic cup under Scot Symon and then we made a pleasing habit of it.
As for last season, it should have been a treble and the level of performances warranted it, but a couple of defensive lapses did for us. In a record-breaking season for us defensively that was hard to take at the time, no question.
However, we are now in the Gio era and we have come out of the traps fantastically well. When all is said and done, he has obviously tweaked things along the way but the bottom line is the foundations to this wonderful start to his managerial career at Ibrox were laid by Steven Gerrard. Should he come back though and try to get any of our players on the cheap, all bets are off and I’ll be coming down off that fence.
Last point for me on Steven Gerrard, or rather more to the point the city he came from. Liverpool gave me The Beatles. That same city has now given me two managers with direct Liverpool links. Both of them left the club in contentious terms. From now on I think I’ll just stick to the moptops, thank you very much.
But let’s stay with October. Without doubt as wonderful as winning the title was, the passing of Walter Smith brought back scenes and outpourings of grief that reminded us of March 1995 and the tragic death of Davie Cooper.
Again, so much can be said and written about the man. I’ll keep it brief. For the generations yet to come, Walter Smith will be spoken about in the same way Bill Struth is today. Hopefully in the future, thousands of dads and grandads will drum the stories of Walter Smith, the man, his achievements, his honesty and humility into their descendants the way my old man drummed the legacy of Bill Struth into me.
So, since the LC semi-final debacle. There’s not much to grumble about on the park is there? Talk about coming in and finely tuning an instrument that had turned a tad rusty and left unattended? The defence that had been leaking goals, usually the first of the game has turned mean again.
The midfield seems to have found the zip and spark of last season again and Joe Aribo especially, seems to have gained a new lease of life. Where there was ponder earlier on there is now wonder. The way he plucked the ball out of the air against St Johnstone at Ibrox recently was a thing of beauty and well worth the price of a hooky fire stick.
Seriously and sadly though, I’m resigned to him leaving after this season. – at this point I’m paying no attention to the rumours and preposterous price tag on his head presently doing the rounds. I’m hoping for an Aribo master-class in the second half of the season.
Yet, where there is light there will always be darkness and it comes once again in the form of the SPFL being worked from the back as usual by the filth. There have been all sorts of arguments back and forth regards the reasons and motives for the ‘winter break’ being brought forward. Covid, crowd restrictions, the welfare of the fans – you couldn’t mark the filths’ neck with a blowtorch with that one.
The bottom line is, and forget the other clubs and the vote that would never have counted anyway, the filth wanted the break brought forward for their own reasons and they are twofold. To allow them to get over an injury ‘crisis’ and furthermore, when the match is to be replayed, there is every chance Rangers’ squad will be depleted by AFCON taking place in whatever war-torn hole is allotted the honour this year. And what the filth want the filth get.
For the record this injury crisis at the cesspit constitutes the yellow submarine running out of steam and their main striker out injured. Still, there’s an honesty about their ducking out of the OF fixture this season. It saves us descending into the squalor of this disgusting organisation manipulating and exploiting the death of some C list celt to get the match postponed. But no doubt it’s what Tommy would have wanted.
So that’s my take on the previous twelve months. The highs of last season and 55, and there would have been well over 100k on the streets if not for the restrictions. All those Union Jacks to delight that hag Aitken and Co’s jaundiced peepers truly would have been a sight for sore eyes. To being brought back down to earth with this season. Yes, we’re still on track for the title but there’s still a long way to go.
One last point. This time last month, not one of us were of the opinion that the filth could get yet another OF Ne’erday fixture postponed to suit their own ends. Yet, incredibly it has happened. If you think they used the dark arts and every trick in the book to win the title in 2008, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Not with the CL money up for grabs this time around.
A Happy New Year to you all and here’s to 56.
