leggoland

BAD TIMES FOR CREEP

2010-11-17T11:33:00.001Z

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IT'S been a bad few days for the Times of London's Scottish edition and its dwindling band of ripped off readers.

The Times was once known as the paper of record in Britain, though that is a repuation it no longer enjoys north of the border thanks to the increasingly bizzare antics of Odious Creep.

More and more he is beginnig to be seen as someone who is to good sound and accurate journalism, what Ann Widdicombe is to ballet dancing.

Whoever's tune he is dancing to is a matter for others to debate, but it is the subject of accuracy - or the lack of it - of much of what Creep writes, which may concern Rangers chief executive, Martin Bain.

Whether or not Bain choses to call in M'learned friends is of course a matter for him.

If he does, it would not be the first lawyer's letter to land on Creep's desk in recent weeks.

Or Bain could report Creep to the Press Complaints' Commission for the complete fiction on which he based an attack on him and Rangers in the Times of London's Scottish edition this week.

It would not be the first time the Press Complaints' Commission had to probe Creep's lack of professionalism in storries about Rangers.

On Monday, his column began to drift into the realms of fantasy when he chastised Bain for failing to speak out against, what he claimed, is a return of the singing of the Billy Boys.

He appeared to take great delight in making sure he pointed out this song had been officially banned by UEFA.

What he chose to ignore were the widely reported comments made by Bain at the recent Rangers Annual General Meeting.

Considering Creep was at the AGM, this once again gives rise to questions about just what he does and does not hear.

However, what Bain said about plans to combat the problem, was also there for all to read in every mass circulation newspaper in Scotland.

Maybe Creep suffers from some sort of reading disorder - dyslexia? - as well as selective deafness.

In the same poisonous piece he went on to suggest that by inviting sailors of the Royal Navy to parade at Ibrox on Remembrance weekend, Rangers were indulging in some sort of dangerous militarism.

But not a mutter -or even a Twitter - about the military presence at almost every major match in the English Premiership, something which was in evidence in particular when Sky showed the Chelsea-Sunderland match.

There was also a snipe at the joyful nature of what happened when the boys in blue of the Royal Navy took the Ibrox turf.

It was a weekend of Remembrance, he insisted, where such larks had no place.

Perhaps the annual Saturday night Royal Festival of Remembrance in front of the The Queen at the Royal Albert Hall, shown live every year on BBC1, is something else he has no knowledge of.

This so very British occasion is a mixture of nostalgia, some fun, including a singalong of old favourites, and a muster, celebrating the freedoms we enjoy, followed by a service of readings, prayers, hymms and finally the silence as the poppies drift down.

Maybe he will write to Buckingham Palace to chastise Her Majesty for tainting Remembrace with frivolity.

And so to what else Creep has been up to - or not up to - in recent days as he trousers Rupert Murdoch's money in return for the minimum of effort.

One again he appears to show a huge disdain for the Scottish national team.

This is a pattern which was noted when he failed to be on the spot to inform readers what going on in the Scotland camp after the defeat in Prague, and before the eagerly anticipated visit of European Champions and World Cup holders, Spain.

He was nowhere to be seen when the media convened at the Scotland camp on the Sunday, for an inquest into what had gone wrong in Prague on the Friday night.

Do his paymasters in News International's powerful places know about this apparent dereliction of duty? Do they care?

There exists a growing feeling within the press pack that Creep has no interest in the Scottish team, for, on Thursday he was not at Hampden for the late afternoon press conference at which Craig Levein announced his Scotland squad, and discussed matters with three groups of journalists, broadcasters, daily papers and the Sundays.

He did appear that evening on Radio Clyde, for which he is paid.

Therefore, while not attending to the business of the Times of London's Scottish edition, he found the time and energy for a nice little earner.

And these days, at Radio Clyde, little cannot be over-emphasised.

He was not at Ibrox for the match against Aberdeen, though he chose to comment on what happened there.

On Sunday he wasn't in Paisley to report on the St Mirren-Celtic game.

Neither did he attend the Remembrance Day service at his church, Hillhead Baptist, though he seemed able to comment on it on Twitter.

Nor did he think it worth his while to follow every other daily newspaper to Aberdeen on Monday to interview the manager of the national team ahead of a Scotland match.

The Times of London's Scottish edition therefore missed out on much of what Craig Levein had to say, though Creep's name did appear on some of
Levein's quotes.

These were filed by the Press Association reporter, and were from the interview Levein gave to the broadcasters.

The PA did not sit in with the daily men and women when they interviewed the manager at greater length, and in much more depth.

Not did the readers of the Times of London's Scottish edition learn anything of Craig Gordon's view on his position in the goalkeeping rivalry with Allan McGregor, which he revealed in a fascinating interview with those same daily reporters.

Creep did however manage to find time in his not-so-busy schedule to travel to Clydebank on Monday for another paid apearance on Radio Clyde.

At least he managed to stir himself on Tuesday to make the trek north for the Scotland encounter with the Faroes.

Of course Wednesday's edition of the Times of London's Scottish edition is perhaps the day when that dwindling number of ripped off readers have short changed the most.

SFA WOULD BE SILLY TO SNUB SMITH

2010-11-16T09:52:00.000Z

IT'S a couple of months now since Jim Traynor, in his Daily Record column, first wrote that Walter Smith is perfect for the role of performance director at the Scottish Football Association.

As is so often the case, Traynor was not only bang on the money, but, again as he often is, ahead of the game.

But in the immediate aftermath of that Traynor column there was no reaction from Smith.

Then, when Sir Alex Ferguson told Scottish Sunday reporters, ahead of the Champions League game, that he thought his old pal should not quit Rangers, Smith made it clear he was not for turning.

He used a special pre-arranged, and pre UEFA press conference, briefing with Scottish daily newspaper reporters in the Europa Suite at Old Trafford the day before the match.

It provided back pages for all of Scotland's newspapers - except one.

Just to remind you...that is the one Odious Creep swans around representing.

He missed out on the significant and cracking tale, because he failed to get there on time, thus denying readers of the Scottish edition of the Times, Smith's reaction to the Fergie story which had appeared in a number of mass circulation Sundays.

But enough of Creep. For now!

Since then things had gone kind of quiet on the subject of what exactly Smith will do when he steps down as Rangers manager at the end of the season.

That was until he appeared at Sunday's Scotland Hall of Fame function to pick up his award, and discuss that future.

And it is a future which, according to the best and most successful manager Scottish football has seen for more than 30 years, will see him stay in football.

Clearly he would not take on a role at any other club in Scotland, so unless his old chum at Old Trafford has something in mind for him, Smith is available to make a contribution to the greater good of Scottish football.

Armed with that information, Scotland manager, Craig Levein now has the chance to stand up and make it clear to his SFA paymasters they would be mugs not to approach Smith.

Levein, we have been told, will have a major input regarding who is appointed as Scotland's performance director.

Campbell Ogilvie, who will assume the presidency in the summer, will no doubt also have a major say.

When a Scotland manager is appointed the procedure is that the four office bearers, plus the chief executive, make a recommendation to the board of directors.

This time around new chief executive Stewart Regan's lack of local knowledge will needless to say make him less influential than Gordon Smith and David Taylor were.

If the board does not approve the name, then those office bearers - though on this occasion maybe not Regan - have no alternative but to resign.

That power is currently held by president, George Peat, first vice president Ogilvie and second vice president, Alan McRae.

Of course they will no doubt pay heed to the contents of the special report from former first minister, Henry "it's a muddle not a fiddle" McLeish.

But really, ask yourself the question....is there anyone better qualified for the job than Walter Smith?

It is question which has already been answered by one of the oldest and wisest heads in Scottish football, Craig Brown.

Motherwel's former Scotland manager, is both eloquent and wise. In fact, if Smith does not fancy a return to the SFA, where he saved Scotland from the brink of oblivion it had been taken to by Berti Vogts, then Broon is the obvious choice.

However, we have to remember, this is the Scottish Football Association we are dealing with.

The organisation which seemed in a hury to get rid of Brown, which inflicted Vogts on the nation, and even more recently, landed the Scots with George Burley.

Therefore the possibility of it making another mess of things is more distinct than distant.

Before landing themselves in another fine mess, the Scottish Football Association should take note of three things.

Number one....Jim Traynor pointed out two months ago, Smith is the ideal man to become Scottish football's director of performance.

Number two....Craig Brown has made clear his backing for Smith to be appointed.

Number three ... and most important of all, Walter Smith has given a clear indication he wants to keep working after he leaves Rangers.

Now then, what's that modern phrase? Ah yes....

IT'S A NO BRAINER!

TIMES A'CHANGING

2010-11-15T11:14:00.002Z

THOSE WHO know me will testify my musical tastes are better served by Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Rodgers and Hart and the Gershwins, than Bob Dylan.

But there is one of the old troubadour's nasal ramblings which strike a topical chord.

The Times They Are A'Changing.

In this case it is the Scottish edition of the Times of London which is changing. And not for the better.

The ABCs - the circulation figures, and the numbers by which the wordsmiths live and die - for October, published today, show the Scottish edition of the Times has suffered the biggest year-on-year percentage plunge of any daily paper on this side of the border.

The Times went hurtling downhill to the mindboggling tune of almost 14per cent - 13.8per cent to be precise.

Of course, since Odious Creep joined, it may be the lack of precision in the sports section - of what used to be regarded as the paper of record - which has chased away so many readers.

So, here begins another wee lesson for all my growing army of loyal readers, as to how newspapers work.

It was around four years ago that time ran out at the Herald for Odious Creep.

Since the change of editorship from Mark Douglas Hume - I worked with him in London - to Charlie McGhee - he was my assistant editor at the Sunday Mail - Creep's working practices were believed to be under greater scrutiny.

The timing could not have been better for his escape, as one of the Edinburgh blethering classes, Magnus Linklater, had been appointed as Scottish editor of the Times of London, and told to beef up the staff ahead of what is known in the business as a relaunch.

Linklater is a friend of Creep, and also of Richard Holloway, another of the blethering bleeding hearts who are to be found in Edinburgh, and who is also a friend of Creep's.

It is a mere short step from there to Odious Creep being offered a job on the Scottish edition of the Times of London.

He took it, despite the fact it meant losing his prized role within the Herald as golf correspondent, something which allowed him to attend the Masters every year, a trip he wallowed in, but was not on offer at the Times.

On top of which, if my information from an exteremly senior source within News International in London, is correct, he moved for less money than he was getting at the Herald.

However, history has a way of repeating itself, and the same thing which happened when he was at the Herald, is now happening at the Times of London's Scottish edition.

When Odious Creep joined the Herald such outstanding sports journalists as Ian Broadley and the late Ken Gallacher, were the big names in the paper, whose circulation was north of 80,000.

Creep's presence, and his friends in high places there, spelled the end for those two oustanding newspaper men, and also signalled the beginning of the Herald's circulation plunge.

Though, despite the Herald not being anywhere near the force it was before Odious Creep joined, it still outsells the Times of London's Scottish editon by more than two to one.

In fact, the Times of London's Scottish edition is actually selling fewer copies now than it was four years ago, before a significant cash investment allowed Linklater to make his flawed decision to employ Odious Creep.

How long this situation is allowed to continue is open to debate. But the one thing I know for sure is the greatest newspaperman of his generation - Rupert Murdoch - is not known for throwing good money after bad.

His long term strategy is directed towards the internet, and he belives eventually people will be willing to pay to read the Times online, to which end he has already put the online version of the Times behind a paywall.

The result is a dramatic fall in online readership, which Murdoch is willing to ride out for as long as the circulation of the paper does not crash alarmingly.

As it continues to do in Scotland.

Cuts within the News International organisation's four titles, the Times, Sunday Times, Sun and the News of the World, are on the way.

The Murdoch way ahead has already been revealed by the closing of the Sunday Times Scotland operation earlier this year.

What's next?

It is unlikely to be the Sun or the News of the World which will suffer in Scotland, as Murdoch is prepared to fund them in their fascinating fight with the ailing Trinity Mirror's Scottish titles, the Record and Sunday Mail.

I am sure you can work out where the Murdoch axe is likely to fall.

These are interesting, and most certainly, A'Changing Times in the old inky business.

Though I still prefer the masters of the Great Amercian Songbook to Dylan, not to mention Odious Creep's favourite, Elton John.

As the late great Malcolm Munro(Big Malky) used to write....'Nuff Said!

AND....

Sad news came my way this morning as a colleague phoned to tell me of the death, at 88, of Bob Ferrier.

Bob was one of the last links to the golden era of the Daily Mirror when such giants as Hugh Cudlipp and Bill Connor ruled the roost, and the circulation topped six million.

He escaped from what became a Mirror madhouse when the lying thieving Bob Maxwell took over, and returned to Scotland where he worked for a number of papers, reporting football on a part time basis.

Bob Ferrier, who retired to Helensburgh, was a gentleman of the old school, with an impish sense of humour and a deep knowledge of newspapers, football, and indeed, life.

He came from an impeccable football background, as his dad was Motherwell legend Bobby Ferrier, who along with George Stevenson formed the Stevenson-Ferrier left wing through the 1920s and into the 30's.

My thoughts are with his family.

ODIOUS CREEP'S LACK OF ETHICS

2010-11-13T09:57:00.000Z

THIS is a wee insight into how journlalism works, and the sort of relationship which exits between managers and reporters. It is based on trust, professionalism and ethics.

From the outset of my career covering top flight football way back in 1972, I have benefited from the insight delivered in what is called an off the record chat, generously afforded me by some of football's greatest managers.

Tottenham Hotspur legend,Bill Nicholson was the first, and on many a Monday afternoon I relished the privilige of sipping tea with him in his White Hart Lane office while listening to his views.

What he said stayed between us, though Mr Nicholson's opinions helped me then, and are still recalled when I make many a judgement.

It was Bells whisky which I sipped as often as not on a Friday afternoon in Nottingham when it suited Brian Clough to be convivial. His company, and what he said off the record, are memories I treasure.

At Aston Villa's Bodymoor Heath training ground, Ron Saunders had a habit of asking you to join him in the sauna for a blether. Especially on a Friday, as he knew I liked a Thursday night curry with his goalkeeper, Jim Cumbes and captain Ian Ross. Happy days.

Jock Stein, who saw Sunday reporters one at a time in his dookit of an office in Park Gardens when he was Scotland manager, was particularly good at giving you a steer.

Jock Wallace when I dealt with him, first at Leicester and then Rangers, let you know just what he was really thinking, something he had in common with many of the Celtic managers I have had such a good relationship with, in particular Davie Hay, Billy McNeill and the late Tommy Burns.

The list of managers is long, the kindnesses extended, the insights gained and the knowledge acquired, endless.

They all had their different ways, but the one thing they had in common was a trust in the ethics and professional reputation of the reporter they were entrusting their secrets to.

And so to Odious Creep, and way he goes about his business, which many in the press pack believe lacks both professionalism and ethics.

On Friday at Murray Park, Walter Smith held his usual radio, television daily newspapers and Sunday papers round of interviews.

Creep was among the gang of daily reporters who attempted to probe Smith on matters of controversy, which are really none of the Rangers manager's concern.

The old silver fox dodged the bullet, but, as is his way, was generous and trusting enough to give reporters a private - and clearly off the record - insight.

Within an hour of the conference ending his trust had been abused, and his generosity taken advantage of.

Odious Creep had broken the golden rule of journalism regarding what is said off the record, remaining off the record.

A clear indication of what Smith said appeared, under Creep's name, on the internet, leaving some of the other fine, dedicated, hard working and completely professional reporters who had been with him at Smith's conference, spitting blood.

Now, Walter Smith is someone who is more than able to take care of himself, but I know how some of the legendary managers who have confided in me over a long career would have reacted.

The hurt in Mr Nicholson's eyes would have been enough to destroy any miscreant, a belt on the head with his squash racket would have been Clough's response, while the vein in Saunders' head would have twitched as he pinned you to the wall.

As for the two Jocks? Stein would have made it his business to destroy your career, while Wallace would simply have re-arranged your features.

Fortunately I was never unethical enough, or lacking in professionalism and courtesy, to be on the wrong end of their wrath.

Though I did once, unwittingly upset Walter Smith. The wreckage he left after he waded in during a post League Cup Final win over Hibs at Parkhead, was devastating.

GENTLE ATTACK ON CELTIC - BUT CREEP ROUNDS ON RANGERS

2010-11-12T09:01:00.000Z

ROSE GENTLE has added her impressive and influential voice to the growing number of people of all faiths to stand up to the fascist bullies of the Green Brigade and their Bloodstained Poppy banner.

While Tom English, writing with passion and perception in the Scotsman, has launched a well aimed attack on the way Celtic have reacted to the whole affair.

Meanwhile, back in cloud cuckoo land - or the Scottish edition of the Times as it is officially known - an Odious Creep has used the row to turn on Rangers, and attack them for inviting military personnel to Ibrox.

Rose Gentle is of course the mother of Gordon - a Celtic supporting soldier - killed at the tender age of 19 while on active service in Basra.

Her campaigning vigour has made her a national figure throughout Britain, and her renown has spread to Europe, the Commonwealth, and across the Atlantic to America.

According to her, as quoted in the Daily Mail, Celtic chairman, The Baron Reid of Cardowan, should be writing to all the families who have suffered a loss to apologise for the infamous Bloodstained Poppy banner.

The subject of the investigation Celtic have announced through a club spokesman, with the promise of life bans if the culprits are discovered, has been what has caught of attention of the Scotsman's, English.

Now English has never shown any overt anti Celtic bias over the years he has worked in newspapers in both Ireland and Scotland, but he clearly feels the Parkhead club have failed to react with same speed and vigour to the Bloodstained Poppy banner as they have a number of times in the past three weeks to their perceived bias against the club by referees and the Scottish Football Association.

English, like Rose Gentle, wants to hear from either the Baron Reid of Cardowan, or Celtic chief executive, Peter Lawwell.

He also shows an impressive grasp of Irish history, pointing out the Sean South of Garryowen song which is a favourite, home and away, of the Green Brigade, pays homage to a man who had much in common with Adolf Hitler in his attitude to Jews. And that he didn't come from Garryowen.

Sean South that is. Hitler didn't come from Garryowen either, though he had plenty of supporters there.

Unfortunately no amount of rationale or historical fact will influence the terrorist supporters and zealots who sing in praise of the IRA and sully the Poppy.

The Poppy has never had any political significance. Or at least it didn't until these zealots highjacked it.

When it was adopted, the Poppy was - and for many continues to be - seen as a symbol to remind us all of the human cost of war.

And when it is worn, and when we join together in a silent and respectful act of Remembrance, what we are doing is paying heed to the words Rabbie, wrote about man's inhumanity to man making countless thousands mourn.

And so we move on to the one newspaper to try, in a tawdry way, to implicate Rangers in an affair which has nothing to do with them.

In the fast fading and increasingly obscure and marginalised Scottish edition of the London Times, their well known Rangers hating correspondent - known in the inky business as Odious Creep - produced an astonishing piece.

Now I know few people will be aware of this, due to the plummeting circulation - now in freefall - of the paper on this side of Hadrian's Wall since he joined it.

And as it is now behind a paywall, viewing it online costs cash few folk are willing to splash out to read Creep's drivel.

However, I am indeed indebted to an old Fleet Street colleague who now works for the News International organisation in London, for passing on Creep's witless words.

This is what appeared under his real name in Wednesday's Times.

"Rangers can sometimes hardly await their next opportunity to have military personnel parading on the pitch at Ibrox in full regalia. It doesn't take much calculation to know what's going on here."

Note the use of the word REGALIA, a description I have never heard used about what military personnel wear. It's UNIFORM,

However, to hoist Creep by his own petard, it doesn't take much calculation to know what's going on here.

Or to wonder why he made no mention of the fact the FA in England chose to have representatives of the three Armed Forces paraded on the pitch at Wembley and be presented to the England team before a recent international.

But more of Odious Creep and his flaccid organ - at least in Scotland - at a later date.

For the moment, the most powerful and relevant voice to join the debate about the Celtic supporters' Bloodstained Poppy banner, belongs to Rose Gentle.

And the angriest, but nevertheless sane and erudite pen, is that wielded by Tom English.

SFA NOW IN REAL DANGER OF SINKING

2010-11-11T11:51:00.001Z

YOU may recall I recently described the Scottish Football Association as leaking like the Titanic after the way its internal dealings were splashed all over a newspaper in the wake of TannadiceGate.

Now I must amend that. For it appears that what has happened relating to the Hugh Dallas alleged email has left the SFA holed with a leak the size of the General Belgrano after one of Her Majesty's vessels slammed a couple of tin fish into the dangerous enemy battleship.

When the Dallas story broke in the News of the World, under the byline, Charlie Lavery, I had my suspicion as to where it had originated.

I am indebted to what most reporters believe is the best connected-inside-Parkhead- Celtic-website, Celtic Quick News, for confirming that suspicion.

Celtic Quick News, which has been pushing this story, and trailing where it will develop, all week, claimed that the source of the Dallas tale was the Republic of Ireland based, Phil Mac Giolla Bhain.

In the past the News of the World have used a number of his stories, and were happy to use his byline. However, I understand that a decision was taken at a high editorial level, to stop using Phil Mac Giolla Bhain's name in the paper.

Hence the apparent collaboration with Charlie Lavery, an old Sunday Mail pal of mine, who, if he didn't have to work on a Saturday, would surely be a Celtic season ticket holder.

Not that any other hack - however old and tired - can have any quibble with a good story, or with the newspaper which published it, providing the story is true and balanced, and its source is not someone who may be percieved by some to have an agenda.

The wider issue, and what must be of grave concern to the SFA's new chief executive Stewart Regan, is the fact that the organisation he presides over seems unable to go about its day to day business without leaks and accusations.

This is a problem which appears to have escalated since the resignation of embittered assistant ref, Steven Craven, followed by his wild accusations of bullying and victimisation. Charges which he levelled against the head of the SFA's refereeing department, former FIFA World Cup whistler, Hugh Dallas.

The timing of Dallas appearing to be in the cross hairs of those hidden snipers with Celtic DNA, has also coincided with Regan arriving as the new kid on the block.

Dallas has long been a hate figure for so many with Celtic leanings, and what has been obvious this week on Celtic message boards, is how they want his body. Professionally at least.

There exists a suspicion, which I have heard from others within the SFA, that this may be the reason why Regan is being subjected to an immediate onslaught .

Therefore there has to be a degree of sympathy for him. Though he did himself no favours by making the trip to Parkhead to see Peter Lawwell, instead of summoning his chief executive counterpart to football's governing body's Hampden headquarters.

Perhaps, as an Englishman abroad, Regan was merely being polite. He will soon find that such courtesy is often seen as weakness in the often rancid world of Scottish football politics.

He was also out of morder in implying that anyone who had been at the SFA before him may have carried political baggage, and worked to an agenda. But he must be learning fast about the world he has stepped into.

Now, as far as the allegation concerning any joke email, forwarded by Dallas is concerned, Regan he has issued a statement saying the matter has been investigated, and will be dealt the internally.

But he must hope the nature and result of that investigation, and how he is dealing with its findings, do not somehow find their way to any foreign based freelance reporter, who would be only too happy to pass them on to the News of the World without worrying about whether or not his name appeared in the paper. Just so long as it was on the cheque.

Regan though may be cute enough to know the way these leaks work, and the fingerprints they leave, and as you read this, could well be laying an electronic trail to trace the leak.

If he doesn't, then Regan and the Scottish Football Association will sink as fast as that enemy battleship went down after the Royal Navy's daring attack.

AND......

ON a sombre note, I was saddened to hear of the death of former Scottish Football Association chief executive, Jim Farry, who also spent a decade as the secretary of the Scottish Football League.

Jim was a good and honest man, who was a great loss to the game in Scotland when he was hounded out of office by Celtic during Fergus McCann's reign. It was the one thing McCann did during his short and eventful time in the game, with which I disagreed.

Jim Farry was missed for many years, and his wise and steady counsel is still being missed today. He wasn't always right, but he was always decent, and even after he departed the SFA I often spoke to him for advice on some of the more arcane ways the organisation operated.

I do not think I ever put the phone down after speaking to Jim without knowing I had been given a valuable and generous insight, and had learned something.

My thoughts are with his family

ENGLAND BAFFLED BY CELTIC POPPY ROW

2010-11-10T08:53:00.000Z

THE REFEREE debate which is a blight on Scottish football, will no doubt outlast the Celtic supporters' Bloodstained Poppy banner row.

Though I know which is the more important topic. And it is most certainly not the one which centres on a purely football matter.

However, both subjects were in evidence during Sky Sports excellent live coverage of the English Premier League game between Stoke City and Birmingham City.

The build up to the action featured a number of clips showing Stoke as the victims of a succession of absurd refereeing decisions, plus the reaction after those incidents of Stoke manager, Tony Pullis.

Pullis was rightly furious and reckoned that so far this season bad refereeing decisions have cost Stoke seven points.

It was a view Sky's outstanding Andy Gray agreed with.

However - and this is just one way things are different in England - nobody from Stoke was ranting and raving about any anti-Stoke conspiracy. Nobody claimed that refs who don't come from the Potteries hate the club.

Nobody even hinted that the Football Association and the EPL's refereeing hierarchy are institutionally biased against Stoke City.

Pullis, for all his rage in the immediate aftermath of such wrong decisions, clearly knows that to talk of conspiracy would not only be as wrong as the decisions which have cost his club, but also make him and Stoke look foolish.

It is doubtful if the good men who are the directors of the club of Sir Stanley Matthews would tolerate such nonsense, far less join in.

There was also the sight of both teams wearing a Poppy on their shirts, without any row breaking out about it being bloodstained.

Now, I lived and worked in Birmingham for a decade from the mid 1970s and know there are more people living there of Irish descent than there are in the whole of Scotland. None of them seem to have any problem with the Blues wearing a poppy on the strip.

Likewise, through the length and breadth of England this weekend supporters in their hundreds of thousands will stand in solemn and respectful silence to honour the fallen in an Act of Remembrance.

And at the matches covered by Sky in England there will be no need for them to commit journalistic suicide by muting the sound of the silence being broken by booing and singing. For, unless some Celtic zealots infiltrate, there will be none.

There will be no debate in newspapers, on websites or radio phone ins. In fact, many of the English pals I have spoken to cannot quite understand what is going on up here over Celtic fans and their Poppy protest.

But I am indebted to one Celtic supporter who has penned a well written and thoughtful piece on the Celtic Underground site, under the name of Bhoy Ali.

He reveals himself to be a Muslim, and makes the comparison between the terrorist zealots who have highjacked that religion, and the extremists among Celtic supporters who seek to highjack not just the club's fanbase, but the very club itself.

Bhoy Ali goes on to say that he knows and mixes with many Celtic supporters but cannot think of one who agrees with the Bloodstained Poppy banner, or with the minority of morons who have flooded the many Celtic sites with their bile.

As I said, it is a thoughtful and well written piece, and I commend it to everyone of every hue. Protestant, Roman Catholic, Muslim and non believers alike.

Not to mention the many English men and woman who find the actions of those who raised aloft that Bloodstained Poppy banner, so distasteful and bewildering.

Rationale does not always come from the most obvious place. But it is out there just the same. You've just got to look and listen. And stop and think.

CELTIC BAN PROMISE

2010-11-09T09:54:00.000Z

NO doubt Hugh Dallas will be watching with interest to see just how Celtic get on with their pledge to ban the supporters who shamed Scotland with their Bloodstained Poppy banner.

After all, Dallas was once sent sprawling at Parkhead in the Celtic Shame Game , won by Rangers, when hammered by a missile which smacked into his head, narrowly missing an eye and causing a wound from which blood poured.

Later on that same day Dallas had his house attacked when he was inside with his wife and family. A brick was hurled and smashed a window on its way into the Dallas living room.

The Herald later reported - on September 5, 2000 - how the culprit, Kevin Dunn, appeared in court before Edith Ryan JP and was ordered to be of good behaviour, and had his sentence deferred for a year.

Dunn, in open court revealed, a fact also reported in the Herald, that he was a Celtic season ticket holder. Amazingly - due to sloppy journalism - there was no quote from anyone at Celtic back then about what their position would be regarding Dunn's season ticket.

Does he still hold one? Or does he attend Parkhead with a matchday ticket? Is he banned? Does anyone know?

There was also the incident involving Fernando Ricksen, who was hit on the head with a missile during, and wounded, another visit to Parkhead by Rangers.

Five years down the line there is no record of any Celtic investigation uncovering the culprit and banning them.

In the spring of 2008 an even worse offence happened when Rangers were at Parkhead. Keeper Allan McGregor went down injured in front of the Jock Stein Stand and the Ibrox club's doctor, Paul Jackson sprinted on to give him urgent medical treatment.

Dr Jackson was targeted by Celtic supporters in the Jock Stein Stand, and one missile smashed into his hand, the sort of injury which could easily have been permanent.

As yet, there exists no record of Celtic having successfully investigated this incident and handed out a ban from Parkhead.

No wonder there are many people out there who look at these historical facts and wonder what the chances are of Celtic uncovering the guilty men and women this time, naming and shaming them, and handing out public life long bans?

It is also perhaps significant the official Celtic response came from an unnamed spokesman, and not from the chairman, former Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Defence, The Baron Reid of Cardowan.

According to reporter Paul Drury in the Sun - his Parkhead credentials are impeccable - The Baron Reid of Cardowan is said to be furious about what happened. If that is the case then let him unleash his fury in public.

There have been few more stirring sights and sounds over the last decade or so, than that old political bruiser in full flow, as his language belongs to a more golden age of rhetoric. Even if you do not agree with him you have to admire his oratory.

So far the most powerful words spoken about this affair which has damned Celtic, came from Billy Monkhouse, interviewed on BBC Reporting Scotland.

His son, Stephen, was just 28, when he was killed while on duty with the 1st Battalion, The Scots Guards in the dangerous Helmand province in Afghanistan. Stephen, his dad revealed, was a keen Celtic fan, who, when on leave, made a beeline to watch his team at Parkhead...if he could get a ticket.

There was also a poignant appearance from an old soldier on Reporting Scotland. A man in late middle age, resplendent in his Scottish British Legion attire.

He looked sad, and spoke of his disgust at how those who were his fellow Celtic supporters could behave in such a way.

Both of those interviews served to underline the point I made in my last blog about the number of servicemen and woman, past and present, and their relations and friends, who support Celtic, and who would have been appalled at Green Brigade's crass banner display.

As far as that banner is concerned I was interested by the phrase - Your Deeds Would Shame the Devils in Hell - as it seemed extremey erudite, and indeed poetic. The brainchild, perhaps, of a university professor?

But no, for research revealed it is not original, but in fact is a line in from an IRA song well known by Celtic supporters.

Of course there has been a fightback to all the criticism the Green Brigade have had, and the popular Celtic supporters website, the HuddleBoard has even attempted to smear the world renown Erskine Hospital for Service People.

According to these delusional zealots, for the first few years after it was opened in 1916, Erskine refused to admit Roman Catholics. What utter nonsense. Poppycock!

For Celtic, the problem is wide spread and deep rooted, and has already led to an allegation - as reported in one newspaper - that their travel partners, Thomas Cook have been in touch expressing displeasure about their sign being shown in the vicinity of the shamed banner, in pictures flashed around the world.

In England there has been much horror and disgust, best expressed on the Newcastle-Mad fans' website, where English feelings ran high, with one of the Toon Army saying there is no chance of Celtic ever being welcome in the English Premiership with this sort of attitude in the stands.

St Mirren, who Celtic visit on Rembrance Sunday, are also aware of the potential for problems. Their general manager, Brian Caldwell has stated clearly in the Sun there will be no repeat of Saints forgetting what day it is... as they did when Celtic visited four years ago.

He has also made it clear there will be no kow-towing go any suggestion the solemn minute's silence should be replaced by the so-called Celtic way of a minute's applause, as there was at Parkhead two years ago.

Last year at Falkirk, where Celtic played on Remembrance Sunday, booing and singing could be clearly heard during the minute's silence. Or at least it could on BBC Radio Scotland and on foreign television stations.

In an act of almost journalistic suicide, someone at Sky chose to censor the news and mute the sound. Something nobody else in any Sky control room did at any of the other matches they broadcast live throughout Britain that weekend.

On Sunday the game will be broadcast by ESPN, and it will be interesting to see what sort of journalistic standards they apply, and if they are in favour of censorship.

For, with the shameful Bloodstained Poppy banner row now extending to news outlets outside of Scotland, and even beyond Britain's shores, the world will be watching. And listening.

POPPY DISGRACE OF GREEN BRIGADE

2010-11-08T09:35:00.000Z

LET me tell you you a story a pal's son - a serving soldier - told me about some of the brave guys and girls who serve with him on the front line.

It's about the football team many of them support. And the way they feel ignored and completely rejected by that club.

As opposed to the way they see their comrades-in-arm, not merely acknowledged, but actually feted by the club those mates support.

The clubs are of course Celtic and Rangers, with the welcome for serving servicemen and women at Ibrox warm and friendly.

On more than one occasion in the past year those boys and girls who put their lives on the line have marched out onto the pitch at Ibrox and been warmling received and applauded by Rangers supporters. Visiting fans have also joined in that applause.

It is a memory those soldiers, sailors and air force personnel will treasure for the rest of their lives.

According to my pal's son, it is an honour his front line mates who follow Celtic would love to be given by their club. But one which has not been forthcoming.

And, in the current climate, with the zealots of the Green Brigade unfurling their anti Poppy banners at Parkhead on Saturday, one can only imagine what lengths this lunatic fringe would go to if Celtic ever did invite service men and woman to parade on the park in uniform and take a bow.

There is a real danger that unless Celtic take a firm and extremely public stand on this offensive issue, many will seek to say the club is dancing to the Green Brigade's tune.

There does appear to be an element of apprehension about what the Green Brigade may be capable of among the wider range of Celtic fans, for when I asked my pal's boy why his Celtic front line mates did not seek to gain publicity, he explained there was a fear among them.

Not, you understand, for themselves, but for their wives and children, girlfriends, mums and dads, and grandparents.

One of the other points this squaddie made to me was one that I have long believed to the the case. You don't ask the guy next to you in the trench, or the girl guarding your back on patrol in enemy territory, what school they went to.

Celtic supporters have a long and honourable history of service to the Crown in the cause of freedom. The sacrifice made by many of a Parkhead persuasion has helped to win the freedom those in the Green Brigade chose to abuse in such a tawdry fashion.

What they are guilty of may be thought by many as something similar to Fascist and Nazi beliefs their Celtic supporting predecessors fought against. Many died defeating it.

This Green Brigade group have a long history of acting in the same manner as what used to be described as the Loony Left, and frankly I have never seen any difference between the extreme left and the extreme right.

Celtic have been left embarrassed again by the actions of this group. Now, according to a spokesman, Celtic will investigate just how the offensive banners got into the ground. Which is a mystery, as many a visiting fan will tell you they are searched ,and any banner they may have is confiscated if the stewards decide it is offensive.

Perhaps the stewards did view the Green Brigade's banner and decide it was okay.

However, it is not a comment from a Celtic spokesman we need. What is required is some bold words from Celtic chairman, The Baron Reid of Cardowan, who once stood just one step down from the head of the Armed Forces, as Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Defence.

Baron Reid of Cardowan, by speaking out in the sort of strong language he often favours, would also take a huge step towards slapping down and silencing the zealots of the Green Brigade if he announced that at Celtic's next home game, a group of Celtic suppporting boys and girls from all three branches of the Armed Forces, will be invited to parade in uniform on the Parkhead pitch and take a bow.

This would give the many Celtic supporters who have children, grandchildren other relations or friends, in those Amed Forces, and those who have served themselves, or whose fathers, grandfathers and uncles won them their freedom, the chance to drown out the Green Brigade.

Surely that old political bruiser The Baron Reid of Cardowan, is not afraid of taking such a bold action?

The boys and girls who serve on the front line with my pal's son, and who support Celtic, would welcome such an invitation.

REFS DO GET IT WRONG SOMETIMES

2010-11-07T14:26:00.001Z

EVERYONE who follows football knows referees everywhere in the world do get it wrong sometimes, and often on more than just the odd occasion.

All teams suffer from a referee who sees something nobody else has, or who rules the wrong way in a borderline case.

After the initial rant and rave against the ref, all in the heat of battle, cooler heads prevail, and clubs and their fans accept that these things happen. Nobody fires off letters to the governing body demanding answers for everything that goes against them.

Such was the case at Paisley when home town born boy, Craig Thomson, reckoned by the Scottish Football Association to be a top man, blundered badly... twice.

Both of the decisions he made went against Rangers, at a time when, after having seen Celtic score nine 24 hours earlier, the supporters of the champions were looking for their team to not only win, but also eat into the goal difference advantage Celtic were able to build against a woeful and totally gutless looking Aberdeen.

In point of fact they managed to reduce that goal difference by only two, when, had Thomson got the only two big calls he had to make in the match, correct it would have been four.

Thomson blundered badly, denying Rangers a perfectly good goal on the stroke of half time, and then awarding a penalty for handball against Steve Davis, whose hand was low at his side, and who actually tried to move it.

On ESPN, Craig Burley was adamant that neither Stevie Naismith or Kenny Miller had fouled St Mirren's Craig Samson when the keeper punched the ball in to his own net.

Whatever Thomson thought it was he saw, it was not a foul by a Rangers player on the Saints keeper.

Burley was less sure about the penalty award. He started by saying Davis' hand was in what he called a neutral position, then added he was far enough away to have gotten his hand out of the way.

When he returned to review the incident again, the former Celtic and Scotland man sounded less sure. He repeated the same words, but his tone was far from firm and certain.

But these are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune which every team everywhere has to endure, and move on from.

On Saturday at Parkhead, where I was on duty, Celtic used the 16 minutes when they held a man advantage over Aberdeen after their former player, Paul Hartley, needlessly conceded a penalty, to race to a three goal lead.

Afterwards Mark McGhee was at a loss to explain the actions of his captain, who is such an experienced player, and who is so vital to a young Aberdeen side.

Referee Alan Muir also helped the ehome team with the second of three penalties which he handed to Celtic. That came seconds before the interval and Dons keeper Jamie Langfield was convinced he made no contact when Shaun Maloney went flying.

For my vantage point it was difficult to tell, and I have not yet caught up with it on television.

However, it does show how referees can impact on a game, even when when one team is clearly better than the other, as was the case with Celtic against Aberdeen and Rangers visit to St Mirren.

No doubt Thomson will review his actions on DVD, and if he is honest with himself, will realise he made a howler in thinking there had been a foul on keeper Samson, and that Davis did not appear to be guilty of deliberate handball, and deserved the benefit of the doubt.

But then again, human beings are are not machines. And refs, despite what Celtic supporters may say, are human, and therefore they make mistakes.

Thomson certainly made two, and Rangers won 3-1 instead of 4-0. That's just how it goes. No dark plots, no politcal baggage and certainly no hidden agendas.

SOUND OF SILENCE BROKEN AT LAST

2010-11-06T10:15:00.000Z

FOR the past three weeks Lord Reid and Peter Lawwell have been doing a fair impersonation of Simon and Garfunkel. The sound of silence from the Celtic boardroom has been deafening.

Now, at last, the statement issued by Lord Reid, the Celtic chairman, about his club's latest running row with the Scottish Football Association, has broken that silence.

What that pillar of the British and Scottish Establishment - he is a fomer member of the British Cabinet as Home Secretarty and Secretary of State for Defence - had to say on the Dougie McDonald, and the wider refereeing issues, was released to the media late on Friday afternoon.

By which time manager Neil Lennon had already been drawn back into the controveresy by answering media questions at his regular Friday lunchtime press briefing.

Lennon is the man I sympathise with most over the position he has been left in during this whole affair. Now, I am well aware this may not be a popular view with a section of my regular readers.

However, I would ask them to step back and try to view all that has gone on, in a calmer way than is normal.

The immediate aftermath of that Sunday afternoon at Tannadice called for an equally immediate reaction from the Celtic manager - in much the same way as the Nani goal for Manchester United against Tottenham Hotspur led to Harry Redknap's outburst.

However much anyone may disagree with Lennon's comments, only someone on the fring of sanity would deny him the right to make them, or would fail to understand his ire.

The affair then moved on to linesman Steven Craven's allegations against referee McDonald and wild bullying claims aimed at refs' boss Hugh Dallas, taking TannadiceGate into uncharted territory.

At which point the focus moved and became a matter for the club - Celtic - and the authorities - the Scottish Football Association - to sort out at the highest level.

At the SFA, chief executive Stewart Regan acknowledged this as he entered the fray and made a number of public statements as well as facing he media. He was also willing - if reports are correct - to actually go to Parkhead to talk to his opposite number there, Lawwell.

What followed was Regan's next statement when he made what I believe to be his unwise comment about how he, as a recently arrived Englishman, was carrying no political baggage and had no hidden agenda.

It was only the day after this appeared in the nation's newspapers - of every political hue - that Celtic, in the shape of chairman Lord Reid - SFA president George Peat's counterpart - and not chief executive Lawwell, Regan's opposite number, who issued the first official Celtic public comment from the boardroom.

Throughout all of the time when the sound of slilence ruled, my impression was that the Celtic board were actually failing to offer Lennon any protection. Remember too that he is a young manager, and however streetwise and bright he is, he was walking through a mine field.

The sort that, during his long career at the top of British politics, governing this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as a member of the British Establishment, Lord Reid has had a great deal of experience in handling.

There was also the drip drip of anti-SFA statements and allegations about refereeing bias against Celtic going back half a century, which came from almost everyone with a Celtic background, short of those within the boardroom, who, with a quiet word, may have been able to have halted it in a minute.

The culmination came when Gary Hooper crazily claimed referees were against Celtic because they are one of the biggest clubs in the world, finally setting the alarm bells a-jangling within Parkhead, and phone calls were made to media outlets - as revealed by Radio Clyde - begging for the interview to be withheld.

Then came Lord Reid's statement, which has been interpreted by the Daily Record, as meaning the Celtic war with the SFA is over, though the extremely well-connected within Parkhead website, Celtic Quick News, has appeared to suggest the opposite to be the case.

Whoever - if indeed anyone is - may have been briefing the Record and Celtic Quick News, on what Lord Reid's statements means, may well be seen as spinning selectively, leaving some observers with the impression they are telling different organisations what they want to hear.

It is indeed a tangled web which has been woven in the last three weeks, with many reputations - and not just those of Craven and Dougie McDonald - having been damaged.

My belief is, in some ways the man to emerge with the most credit from it all - and there is not much to be gained by anyone - is Lennon, who has been honest and up front, and, until late on Friday afternoon, all on his own.

I wonder if he listens to Simon and Garfunkel's the Sound of Silence as he drives in to Lennoxtown for training every day.

JUST WHAT DID SFA BOSS REGAN MEAN?

2010-11-05T07:45:00.001Z

STEWART REGAN appears to have given succour to the wild rantings and ravings of those with a Celtic DNA who believe the world of Scottish football is weighed against them.

The new chief executive of the Scottish Football Association has no doubt acted and spoken from the best and most noble of motives.

However, he has still to discover that every action and every word is pored over and picked at with the sort of forensic manner which the old Kremlin watchers used to apply to statements from the Soviet Union.

The first mistake Regan made, if what was widely reported was correct, was going to have a meeting with his Celtic counterpart, Peter Lawwell at Parkhead.

Regan is the top dog at the SFA and if Lawwell wanted to see him then it is the club representative who should have been invited to Hampden.

And even if any meeting was instigated by Regan, then Hampden and not Parkhead should have been the venue. At worst a neutral venue, but, under no circumstances, should Regan have headed for Parkhead, thus giving the impression he was dancing to Celtic's tune.

Next we come to what he said in the interview which appear in the newspapers, and in particular to the demand from Celtic for an independent investigation into the Tannadicegate affair.

According to Regan his probe was effectively just that, for, and again in his own words, he had just arrived as the SFA chief executive and, as an Englishman, arrived with no political baggage or hidden agenda.

Those words may actually damn Regan and reveal what many people will no believe is his view that Scots, working at the SFA, do have political baggage and do work to a hidden agenda.

I am sure Regan meant no such thing. But it is what many at Celtic, both within the club, among those who have been associated with Celtic, and almost all of those who support Celtic, believe and have articulated.

Therefore, in saying such a thing, the appearance is that Regan is kow-towing to that rampant paranoia.

Of course, my belief that Regan did not mean to imply bias within the SFA may be wrong. Perhaps that is exactly what he meant. Some will certainly think so.

His words, when weighed and picked over with a forensic toothpick, will mean what people want them to mean, with Celtic supporters believing they prove they have been right all along, while those at the SFA may well feel insulted and wronged.

To be fair to Regan, he has endured a baptism of fire, walking straight into the still to be explained Allan McGregor situation, where it took 13 days for the Rangers keeper to be reported for what he did at Pittodrie, the clear implication being that whoever did the reporting, timed things so that McGregor was banned for the Old Firm game.

Regan showed a quick and reasoned grasp of the facts in that situation and acted with speed to ensure that did not happen.

The Tannadicegate affair has been a much more complicated thing for him to try to resolve as the drip-drip-drip of poison which has been landing on the SFA's head, has cranked up unacceptable pressure.

What Regan has done, and what is to his credit, is to get proper chief executive powers from the SFA board in order that he can steamline the committee system. Or at least that is what appears to be the case from what he has said in today's interview.

Once again though, his words are open to interpretation, and they carry more than just a hint of David Brent style Office speak babble.

Regan has come to Scotland from Yorkshire Country Cricket Club. Yorkshire folk revel in being blunt, to the point and calling a spade a bloody shovel.

But then again, maybe that is just what he was doing when he spoke about being an Englishman with no political baggage or hidden agenda.

If that was what he meant, there is sure to be unrest within the SFA. Celtic though will feel vindicated and be cock-a-hoop.

CELTIC TUNE HITS A BUM NOTE

2010-11-04T08:21:00.000Z

ONE can only wonder if the ghost of Sir Alexander Gibson is stalking the boardroom and dressing rooms of Parkhead and Lennoxtown.

And ponder if the legenadary conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra is even joined by the spirit of Sir Henry Wood, the man who founded that most British of musical institutions, the Proms.

For it certainly may appear to some, that there is a presence within Parkhead, wielding the baton and orchestrating a symphony in Major moan.

Gary Hooper was the latest soloist to step up to the mic and blether about how put upon Celtic are. In doing so, we saw things move from one end of the scale to the other.

Billy McNeill had used his column in the Sun to once again claim that referees have always had it in for Celtic and that the club never got any 50-50 decisions, and that this situation stretched back over 50 years.

It's the second time McNeill has used his Sun column platform to sing this song, the first co-inciding with his appointment by the club as a Celtic Ambassador.

So much for the Old Bhoy. Next up on the songsheet was Gary Hooper, the recently signed Englishman, who, as a striker, has impressed.

His verse to the old chorus was a new one. Celtic, according to Hooper, are victimsed by referees because they are a big club, and as such are the target for refs who are just itching to give a decision against a big club.

That's a lyric I do not think anyone has ever heard before. The usual verdict, from smaller clubs in England and throughout the world, is in fact the opposite, and that big clubs, with huge and vocal supports, get more than their fair share of the decisions.

There is also another glaring flaw in the Hooper song. A bum note, if you like. It is quite simply, if that were to be the case, then Rangers too would suffer from being a big club against whom referees can't wait to give a decision.

Which is hardly in harmony with all the other songs the Celtic support has been singing for as long as I can remember - just short of the half century of McNeill's recall.

According to what many with Celtic DNA have been saying for all of those years, Rangers have had more than the lion's share of refereeing decisions, while Celtic have had an equal number against them.

Hardly the lyric which Hooper gave a rendition of. In fact, almost the opposite.

When you are writing a musical - as Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart, Cole Porter, and the Gershswin brothers showed, setting the mood for the suspension of disbelief is the key to it all.

Whoever is writing the current words and music for a show which has beeen running for years and has every chance of warbling away for years to come, is off key, and flat.

Sir Alexander Gibson and Sir Henry Wood would not approve

REF McDONALD NOW BLAMED FOR SANTA STORY

2010-11-03T10:00:00.001Z

NOBODY who I have spoken to in the aftermath of Rangers defeat in Valencia has expressed any view other than, the better team won.

It is a weight of opinion which has been heartening to hear, coming in the wake of the Scottish Champions' 1-1 draw with Inverness Caley at Ibrox, a point, which many Rangers fans agreed Caley were worth.

Too often too many people who claim to support a team in Scotland - and many who are involved at the top level with big clubs - prefer to bleat about external forces costing them.

We have even heard one whinge from a Hearts director about the dangers of match fixing in Scotland. What utter bunkum and balderdash.

But, in recent years this is just the sort of thing we have come to expect from Hearts, a club which has lost its way, and the respect of many.

The recent shennanigans surrounding Dougie McDonald highlight the dangers of such rampant nonsense.

Good grief, one newspaper even ran a story about there being complaints about him appearing on the wireless and revealing there is no such person as Santa Claus.

If that is not ridiculous then perhaps someone out there will tell me just what is?

Thankfully the Champions League trip to Spain by Rangers allowed us to return to football matters. I sometimes wonder if some of the conspiracy theorists ever actually go to a game, or sit quietly at home and watch one on the box, as I did this week.

As usual, the Sky coverage was superb, with anchorman David Tanner providing just the right sort of balance of colour and questions to pundit Neil McCann. Tanner is clearly studying the creme de la creme of football anchormen, Richard Keyes.

The game too was magnificent. A contrast in styles and approach, though anyone who thought Walter Smith merely parked the bus was not paying attention.

In fact Rangers played with a combination of the attacking style they displayed at Ibrox against Bussaspor and the Spanish side, and just a hint of the caution they adopted at Old Trafford.

That much was in evidence when the best chance of the opening spell fell to them, with Stevie Naismith so very unlucky when his fine skill on the run ended with a shot which took the merest deflection and hit the post, coming out rather than going in.

Naismith suffered another frown from the brow of Lady Luck when, with Valencia two goals ahead, he met a Madjid Bougherra cross with a text book downward header which stranded the keeper, but again hit the post, and once more bounced out instead of in.

There was also the moment when Naismith - he had another superb Champions League game - elected to pass to Kenny Miller to set up a chance which Miller should have blasted with his right foot instead of cutting back onto his left , giving Valencia time to close in on him, so that his shot went straight to the keeper.

Those were three big chances - two of them a whisker away from going in - and in a place such as Valencia, that is as many as a team such as Rangers can hope to create.

Valencia's breakthrough goal actually came about, in a way, due to the excellence of goalkeeper Allan McGregor, whose reputation with Rangers and Scotland continues to grow.

Had the keeper not somehow managed to get a hand to the shot, Sasa Papac, on the line, would most certainly have cleared it.

The highlighting of these instances should not be interpreted as a carp against the result. But what they do underline is the narrow margins which exist at the rarified level of the Champions League, and they also serve to illustrate just what Walter Smith means when he says that in these matches Rangers require circumstances to be favourable.

Smith knows such circumstances are unlikely to prevail in his team's favour in every Champions League match, and that even when they do it is not certain Rangers can benefit.

The game against Valencia at Ibrox was the classic example of this when Rangers fine play created enough chances to have won the match. Had one or more of two misses by Miller, two by Naismith and one from Ricky Foster, gone in, the circumstances of the group would have been altered.

For the defeat in Spain would not have holed Rangers chances of reaching the last 16 of Europe's elite tournament, below the waterline.

However, and this is the basic truth of the matter, both Valencia and Manchester United have better teams and bigger squads than Rangers and were always going to prevail in the end.

The Ibrox target was always to first, improve on the two points gathered from last season's inglorious campaign, and then aim for a place in the Europe League.

The first aim has been achieved with five points harvested, and Rangers now stand on the brink of their second target.

Which of course would see them playing in Europe after Christmas is over, and Santa has retreated to Lapland.

Now, just how will Dougie McDonald be lined up to carry the can for that?

PARKHEAD PARANOIA

2010-11-02T10:40:00.000Z

PARANOIA, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a mental derangement, which, especially in chronic forms, is characterised by delusions.

I thought it would be useful to clarify the exact meaning of the word before exploring examples of paranoia raging around various websites in the last few days.

It would seem Celtic supporters are deluding themselves into believing the club they support has always been treated badly by the Scottish Football Association.

Indeed, the Celtic Underground site went so far as to say that the SFA has always been governed by people with an anti-Celtic bias.

That is a serious allegation. It is also the delusion of chronic paranoia.

For a start, of all the people who are both employed by the SFA , and who make up the reprepresentation from clubs and other bodies, who would appear to be the best paid.?

That might well prove to be Eric Riley, who is the Celtic executive director of finance, and who earned, according to accounts in the public domain, £222, 765 last year. That's more than new SFA chief executive Stewart Regan has signed up for.

Riley has been the Glasgow Association's member on the SFA for many years, and sits on two of its most powerful bodies. He is vice chairman of the Disciplinary Committee and a member of the Appeals Committee, and has previously been the vice chairman of the General Purposes Committee, which has a wide range of powers..

There is of course nothing wrong, or in any way improper, about that. In fact, it is both right and proper that a club such as Celtic should be represented and have its voice heard at the highest level of the game.

Celtic supporters though, blinded by their delusions, cannot see the influence Riley has at that rarified level.

They also seem to be suffering from amnesia. For instance, though the latter half of the 1990s and into the 21st Century, a Celtic director - indeed a one time Celtic chairman - Jack McGinn, sat at the pinnacle of Scottish football's power structure as the President of the Scottish Football Association.

Such was his power that his reign extended even beyond the normal two terms in office. A sort of SFA FDR is you like.

McGinn was therefore one of the most powerful and influential figures in Scottish football....ever!

The Scottish Football Association, over which former Celtic chairman McGinn ruled for longer than other presidents, and where Celtic's highly paid director of finance, Riley, sits on one powerful committee, is the vice chairman of another, and has occupied that position on a third, can therefore not be said, by any rational person, to be governed now, or in the past, by people with an anti-Celtic bias.

To go even further back, probably the most influential of all Scottish Football Association presidents I can recall was that towering figure from Celtic's history, Bob Kelly, whose trenchant statements in the 1960s were viewed as the authentic voice of Scottish football.

In fact, both then and now, it could be claimed that of all of Scotland's major clubs, Celtic have been the most influential .

And yet the Parkhead paranoia continues, with a letter from Joe O'Rourke of the Celtic Supporters Association on that group's behalf, and also speaking for the Celtic Trust, the Affiliation of Registered Celtic Supporters Clubs and the North American Federation of Celtic Supporters Clubs, having been sent to Celtic saying that they are all 100per cent behind Celtic's campaign.

What campaign would that be? For we have heard nothing - open and above board and on the record - from either Celtic chairman Lord Reid, or chief executive Peter Lawwell, about any Celtic campaign.

It was a point well made in his Monday column in the Record by Jim Traynor when he called for these two powerbrokers to make a statement.

Celtic's fans have shown no such reticence, and the Celtic Supporters Association went on to reveal that a number of organisations of Celtic supporters hope to meet in the next few days to discuss and decide on the way forward.

As for Celtic Football Club, it will be represented at Hampden later this week as part of a previously arranged meeting between the clubs and the SFA.

It is not known if Celtic director and SFA member Eric Riley will ride the two horses at the meeting, or if Reid or Lawwell will attend.

Hampden is also the venue for some wild calls out there in cyberspace for Celtic supporters to descend upon and stage a protest on Saturday.

There is though one website point which deserves careful attention and thought. The Huddleboard claims Celtic supporters have been denied an independent investigation into refereeing in Scotland.

Actually I think such an independent probe would be a good thing, as I am sure its findings would once again reveal the true level of paranoia.

It would have to be conducted by someone with impeccable refereeing credentials, who understood written and spoken English, in order that there could be no misunderstandings. England therefore appears to be the obvious place to look for a likely candidate.

Maybe someone like....Jeff Winter?

CRAVEN'S SIN OF OMISSION

2010-11-01T09:29:00.000Z

IT has been interesting today to see the "TannadiceGate" affair take another turn, with Steven Craven no longer being able to get away Scot fee with playing the victim.

In fact, when you go right back to the very beginning of this sad sorry mess, Craven was actually the villain for failing to call what he saw, honestly and without fear or favour. Craven's sin of omission!

Had he done so then there would have been the usual wee rammy, which would have blown itself out within 48 hours, apart from the usual moans of Celtic supporters, none of which any sensible person attaches any credibility to.

However, Craven did not act according to what he admits he saw, and what he concedes the decision should have been.... which was no penalty.

That much is crystal clear. When referee Dougie McDonald originally pointed to the spot, Craven immediately moved to take up the required assistant's position for a penalty kick.

He did this despite knowing - as he has stated clearly - that the challenge was fair, and that Celtic should most certainly not been given such an award.

All he had to do was stand his ground. No verbal communication into McDonald's earpiece was required. That he did not do that put McDonald, who was already doubting his original decision, in a difficult position.

Since then Craven, who accrording to more than one source is not popular with many of his senior colleagues, has whinged and whined and appeared to suffer from almost as much paranonia as those Celtic supporters who think everyone is out to get them.

He also appears to some to be the man responsible for the press leak of his resignation letter - something which, if it were the case would surely be a breach of trust.

For 48 hours - from the the outcome of Friday's appearance by SFA chief executive Stewart Regan - through Craven's claims in the Sunday Mail, he was portrayed as the poor put upon victim, with everyone ganging up to do him down.

He even attempted to embroil the Inverness Caley manager, Terry Butcher, a former Rangers and England captain, as some sort of surrogate character witness, something which smacked of the pathetic and the desperate.

Now McDonald has had his own say, at length and expressed in an interview with the highly experienced Jim Traynor. You can bet your bottom dollar Traynor, a skilled and tough interregator, would have given him a rough ride to get at the truth.

But the impression gained is of a decent enough guy who got caught up in trying to help Craven, for whom he may originally have felt a twinge of sympathy. But when he asked what he had to gain by going along with the original story, it was a question which is worth pondering.

In fact McDonald had nothing to gain. Maybe his biggest mistake was in misjugding the character of the man he was trying to help.

It was also interesting to read what the other linesman that day, Charlie Smith's view of Craven is, as he revealed to Michael Grant in the Herald.

Craven, according to the long serving and highly respected Smith, jumped for twenty pieces of silver.

That is a pretty damning indictment of Craven, and in the sort of colourful language we can all understand.

Then there is the chairman of the Scottish Football Senior Referees' Association, Martyn Cryans, whose support for McDonald can also be interpreted as a jaundiced view of Craven.

There also lurks in the background what many suspect is Celtic's unhappiness that the man in charge of Scotland's referees is Hugh Dallas. That is the elephant in the room.

One Parkhead chief executive, Allan McDonald , once laid himself open to ridicule by revealing how Celtic employed a psychologist to compile a report of Dallas' body language when he handled the Celtic shame game at Parkhead in May 1999 when Rangers won to clinch title.

McDonald's revelations came one midweek afternoon when reporters, who had been invited to a social occasion at Parkhead, took the chance to talk to the chief executive about this and that in the Parkhead boardroom.

The Celtic chief executive was happy to oblige, tape recorders were in evidence, and there was no attempt to trap McDonald, who freely volunteered his astonishing tale.

Which is why it is worth returning to Jim Traynor's fascinating interview with McDonald in the Record, and examine what the referee has to say about Craven and about Dallas - who was the best whistler Scotland has produced for a quarter of a century.

It was Dallas, ref McDonald reveals, who encouraged him to come clean over what actually happened, and the sequence of events relating to the penalty which never was.

McDonald says that Craven has never seen eye to eye with both Dallas and the SFA. He added that Craven had made it clear to come colleagues that he intended to resign and that maybe he saw this as a high profile way out.

A chance, in McDonald's words, to make hay at the same time, and to have a go at Dallas.

Of course Dallas is a highly skilled operator and hugely intelligent man. As well as being a tough cookie, whose physical bravery was there to see in that Celtic shame game, when despite being attacked and
wounded by Celtic fans, he carried on.

It would appear that the SFA's head of refereeing is already taking action to protect and preserve his reputation for integrity. M'Learned friends could well find this becomes a nice little earner.

Craven's original sin of omission could well come back to haunt him.

SFA MUST FIND THE LEAK

2010-10-30T09:16:00.000+01:00

ONE thing we have learned from the Dougie McDonald investigation is that in matters relating to Celtic the Scottish Football Association appears to be as watertight as the Titanic.

And that is the something which new and already beleaguered chief executive Stewart Regan must now address.

Regan must ask some hard questions following the leaking of referee observer Jim McBurney's report on Dougie McDonald's handling of the Dundee United-Celtic game in general, and the penalty U-turn incident in particular.

It is believed the report McBurney delivered to the SFA first leaked into the public domain through a website which many journalists believe has impeccable sources within Parkhead.

No harm to the website. Finding things out is its job. And increasingly it is on the web, as opposed to the traditional form of the old inky business, where information is to be found.

And no harm either to the newspapers and television stations who pounced on the revelations and passed them on to their readers. Or to the reporters who won't highlight the fact that somewhere there is a whistleblower. That would be a bit like cutting off their nose to spite their face.

But there is another pertinent question to be asked. It is, why was there no such leak regarding the indentity of the retired referee, ex player and former manager who recently sat on judgement on Allan McGregor?

The answer must surely lie in the indentity and motives of the whistleblower. Any study of people who leak, and there have been many within politics and the civil service, shows they blow the whistle on things with which they do not argree.

Now, regular readers who know I have called for greater transparency in the way the SFA goes about its business, may claim my views show a lack of consistency. They would be wrong.

My complaint about the way the McGregor affair was handled was the fact that those who sat on judgement on McGregor were cloaked in secrecy.

Against that, those who debated and decided on the issue involving McDonald and his change of mind at Tannadice, were named.

But, while justice must be seen to be done, there must also be a degree of confidentiality in day-to-day dealings within the SFA.

Referees, on seeing McBurney's report splashed all over the place, will now be more careful what they say to an observer. Indeed they may not wish to enter into any discussion with an observer in the immediate aftermath of a game.

And observers themselves will now worry if anything contained in their report finds its way onto a website and then into the press, should it suit the agenda of a whistleblower.

This will make life harder for referees and their assistants, for the observers, and for the head of the refereeing department, Hugh Dallas. It will also make it more difficult to get at the truth.

New SFA chief executive Regan therefore has a job on his hands to restore confidence in the system within an organisation which many now believe seems to have never heard of the old saying about sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander.

He went some way towards that by stating clearly there is no institutional bias against Celtic within the Scottish Football Association, and the fact he had to make such a statement is itself a sad indictment of where we are.

Regan also made it clear there will be no SFA probe into Celtic's latest complaint - the one involving the penalty Willie Collum awarded to Rangers at Parkhead.

One thing though which has been lost in the hysteria which has surrounded this sad, sorry, and a times sordid, little tale, is that when McDonald initially claimed he overturned his decision on the advice of assistant, Steven Craven, he was doing so for the best of motives.

Regan made it clear that McDonald knew that if he changed his mind over the penalty award, he would be marked down by the observer, and he had no wish for Craven to suffer a similar fate. In that he showed loyalty to a colleague, and in doing so put himself in the firing line.

There was also the pointed remark from Regan about other matters being involved in Craven's resignation, and that the SFA are looking at those other matters in an internal discussion.

Regan must be hoping that whenever those talks take place, whatever is said in confidence, behind closed, doors, does not become the latest leak to hole the SFA below the waterline.

SCOTLAND SHOULD BACK ENGLAND

2010-10-29T11:40:00.000+01:00

IF there is anyone out there who wants England's bid to stage the 2018 World Cup to fail, it's time they took a hard look in the mirror and had a long talk with themselves.

Of course I am well aware that Scotland harbours many who suffer from a blind hatred of England and all things English.

Just as I am equally aware that, while enjoying a wind up with our British cousins, there are even more Scots who feel affection for them.

However, neither emotion should play a part in Scots giving their full backing for England to stage the 2018 tournament. What should be the over-riding factor is fairness.

For a start, by the time the next but one World Cup comes around, it will have been 52 years since the only time the tournament was hosted there.

In that time it has been staged twice in Germany and twice in Mexico, with Spain, Italy and France the other European countries to have hosted it.

It has even been held in America, where they think it's a wee lassies' game, and where they call it soccer, though the Yanks are bidding to put on the World Cup razzmatazz for the second time.

So the time is now right - maybe even overdue - for FIFA and Sepp Blatter to ensure that there is no hint of backroom political wheeling and dealing, and that open honest fairness is the order of the day.

My belief if that if Scotland joined in, in helping the English bid in an equally open way, it would show a generosity of spirit which would help England and, at the same time, enhance this country's reputation.

So let's see first minister Alex Salmond step up and proclaim that, as a patriotic Scot, he wants our nearest and best neighbour to win the race to host the Word Cup in 2018.

And let us also hear the same from Scottish Football Association president, George Peat.

It would also be helpful if other leading figures within Scottish football joined a Scotland-is-backing-the-England-bid campaign.

Rangers chairman, Alastair Johnston should speak out, while his counterpart at Celtic, former Defence Secretary in a British Government, John Reid's voice would be powerful, and possibly influential too, given his status within the Establishment.

But most of all let us hear from the Tartan Army and their two often quoted spokesmen Hamish Husband and Tam Ferry.

They are both keen to prattle on about the Tartan Army at other times, so let us hear from them now. For it is time for old antagonisms to be put aside. The Tartan Army could even enhance its reputation by being all grown up about this issue.

Of course it would be lovely if we in Scotland could stage a amajor tournanment, but the size of our wee country makes the World Cup an impossible dream.

However, if England succeeds, there are benefits for Scottish football, and for the tourist industry north of the border.

Some of the nations taking part might seek to base themselves within easy reach of Celtic's Lennoxtown and Rangers's Murray Park, and use their training facilities.

Hibs and Hearts could also see their revenue boosted during the cash-flow dry summer months as it is a sound bet there are counties who would chose the Edinburgh area as a good base.

And, with the compact nature of Britian, many of the hundreds of thousands of supporters who would flock to the tourney from all over the world, would be sure to want to make a visit to Scotland a part of their World Cup experience.

It makes sense financially And it makes sense morally too.

There are plenty of Scots - Hollyrood justice secretary Kenny MacAskgill at their forefront - who seek to portray the Scottish people as morally superior.

A sort of political slant to the old drunk man's "Wha's Like Us? toast, if you like.

Now the opportunity is here for all Scots to show just what kind of moral fibre they are made of. To put aside the oldest football rivalry in the international game and to do what is right.

It may even prove to old cynics such as this observer, that Scotland - and not just in a football sense - has at last grown up.

THAT PENALTY EXPLAINED

2010-10-28T10:57:00.000+01:00

WHAT has puzzled me since Rangers won the Old Firm game, is the continuing row about why referee Willie Collum awarded a penalty.

There have been numerous versions put forward as to why Collum pointed to the spot, and just as many as to why he should never have made the decision.

But the one which takes the biscuit, and which is going the rounds in Celtic circles, is that Collum should not have given a penalty because he did not see any offence to lead him to that decision.

It is a preposterous notion that any referee would ever give a decision based on something he did not see, and here are many instances of an official saying that he could not give a free kick because, from the position he was in when the incident happened, he could not see it.

A referee cannot give what he does not see. It is a clear cut and simple as that.

So what was it that Collum saw which led him to believe Rangers deserved a penalty when Kirk Broadfoot flew threw the air inside the box with Daniel Majstorovic in close attendance?

Well, the evidence is out there, and if anyone choses to view the clip of the incident with eyes and mind open they will see what Collum saw when he turned back towards the two players.

To start with the ref had attempted to get out of the way of the ball and, in doing so, turned his back on where the ball broke to, which was into the path of Broadfoot, with Majstorovic shaping to make a challenge.

By the time Collum's eyes were back on the ball, so to speak, what he saw was Broadfoot in mid-air with both of Majstorovic's hands planted smack bang in the the middle of the Rangers man's chest.

Therefore it was reasonable for the referee to spot that as an offence and act accordingly.

Much has been made of the way the Celtic defender made efforts to pull out of any challenge, and much has also been made of allegations of Broadfoot diving. The clips of the incident provide pros and cons for both shades of opinion.

But what those clips clearly show - with no shades of grey - is that the Celtic man placed his hands on the chest of the Rangers player, and that Willie Collum saw that.

Now this was a split second judgement in the midst of an Old Firm game, and one which had swung away from Celtic and in favour of Rangers in the opening 20 minutes of the second half.

The play was fast and furious. The calls Collum had to make were many. And all of them brought protests and howls from the players, not to mention the baying of the crowd.

It was a split second judgement which Collum had to make right there and right then. He did not have the luxury of viewing it a dozen or so times in slow motion and from various angles.

All he saw was Broadfoot in mid air and Majstorovic with his two hands on the chest of the Rangers man. Was he not entitled to think - in that blink of an eye - that it was a penalty?

Had, for instance, the incident had happened at the other end of the field and involved, for example, Anthony Stokes flying through the air with Madjid Bougherra's hands on his chest, would Collum's decision have been to award a penalty?

Of course it would have been.

Frankly, I fail to see what all the fuss has been about. And I wonder just what Michel Platini, who was there to see it, and who spoke out the next day in support of referees, thought about all the ballyhoo.

As a football man, Platini would no doubt have taken time to view what happened on the many clips available on the internet, and he would have seen what Collum saw, and therefore understood the referee's decision.

And, like me, the UEFA president may well have wondered just what all the fuss has been about. Though unlike me, he would have been able to dismiss it all with a fine Gallic shrug.

RANGERS THEN AND NOW

2010-10-27T14:41:00.000+01:00

IT was Mark Hateley who kicked off the debate about comparing the current crop to those who starred in the Rangers nine-in-a-row era.

In the aftermath of the way the champions fought back to victory against Hearts at Tynecastle, after having recovered from two down to win against Aberdeen at Pittodrie, Hateley drew a favourable comparison between then and now.

Now, after Rangers came from behind to triumph against Celtic at Parkhead for the first time in 33 years, Walter Smith has joined in and announced he is as proud of the modern Rangers as he ever was of any of the teams he fashioned in the past.

Though, unlike Hateley, Smith was careful not to be too specific and never mentioned the various line-ups which figured between the summer of 1988 and the spring of 1997.

But if you cast your mind back about a year you may recall Smith taking at least one of those nine-in-a-row men to task for making a disparaging comparision.

That came at a time when it was fashionable for pundits, and many media men to moan about Rangers being one of the worst in the club's history.

At the time I was quick to argue this point, citing the sides which played during the end of John Greig's era as manager, and when Jock Wallace returned for his second stint.

That led to some of of the knockers regrouping and saying that what they really meant was that the Smith team which took the title in 2009 was the worst to win the championship.

Which again led me to history and season 1958-59 when, with Scot Symon in charge, Rangers lost 2-1 to Aberdeen at Ibrox on the last day of the season, and needed Celtic's win over Hearts at Parkhead that same afternoon to give them the crown.

The relative merits of different teams from different eras will always provide a banquet upon which fans love to gorge.

Opinions will vary, and older heads will always hold the advantage of having seen more. A Partick pal of mine, Robert, brooks no argument with his assessment that the football played for two years under Dick Advocaat was better than anything he has seen from Rangers.

I often take issue and point to that period during the nine-in-a-row run when Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup were together, as being just as good.

Of course, on the subject of an older - and baldy head - I am able to pull rank and return to the early 1960s and the outfit of Jim Baxter and Ian McMillan, plus Millar, Brand and Wilson.

For me, there is no comparison between the Rangers team of the last couple of seasons and the one which contained Gazza and Laudrup.

There are though, more than a few similarites between the sides Smith can field now and the ones he put together, and which laid the foundations which Gazza and Laudrup built on to complete nine-in-a-row.

The fighting spirit of that side, with John Brown always seen as its brave heart and Richard Gough its courageous captain, can be seen in the strong and steady approach of David Weir and the way Madjid Bougherra can lift his side when he breaks forward.

While in goal, Andy Goram often appeared to be the only thing which stood between Rangers and defeat back then. One night at Pittodrie springs to mind when he almost single handedly defied a fine Aberdeen side and Hateley scored in a 1-0 win.

Allan McGregor is another keeper whose form for two years has often been outstanding, and who seems to inspire the same confidence in those in front of him as Goram used to

The main difference is that back then Smith had the option of buying big. Even before such glamour names as Gascoigne and Laudrup joined the ranks, he had lashed out plenty for Goram and McCall, plus, among others, Alexei Mikhailitchenko and Trevor Steven.

Nowadays those sort of players, with their massive transfer fees and huge wages, are well beyond the reach of Rangers.

And yet, with such limited resources since he returned in January 2007, with Rangers out of both cups and too far behind to even challenge for the title, Smith has, in three full seasons, won two SPL crowns, three League Cups and one Scottish Cup, plus taking the team to the UEFA Cup Final.

That surely gives the players who have contributed to to that success story, the right to be taken more seriously than they were just a year ago when all of the snide comments regarding them being the worst Rangers team ever, later modified to the worst to win the title, must have angered Smith.

In what those who have observed him for some time expected, Smith chose to keep his powder dry until the moment was right, and as ever his timing has been impeccable.

However, to earn the right to a true comparison with the teams which played through the first part of the club's nine-in-a-row era, this current crop will be required to hand the manager a retirement gift of a third successive SPL trophy.

If they can do that, then anything Smith would have to say about them would be well worth hearing.

COLLUM DEATH THREATS

2010-10-26T10:48:00.001+01:00

HUGH DALLAS was probably the least surprised man in Scotland to learn Willie Collum had been subjected to death threats in the wake of Rangers 3-1 victory over Celtic at Parkhead.

After all, Dallas, at Parkhead in his refereeing heyday, was felled by a coin which left him with blood pouring from a wound and needing stitches, when he took control of the Celtic shame game in May 1999 which Rangers won to take the title.

And afterwards, after he had reached what he believed to be the sanctuary of his own home, and was in the bosom of his wife and family, a brick was sent crashing through one of his house windows.

More recently, Steven Craven, the assistant who was involved in referee Dougie McDonald's about turn on that penalty award to Celtic against Dundee United, has quit the game following reports that he too had been threatened, and his two sons verbally abused.

It is amazing that on the day UEFA President Michel Platini, who had been Celtic's guest at the Old Firm game, was speaking out about the need for clubs and supporters alike to respect referees, Collum should have had to call in the police.

There was also, according to the Keith Jackson's latest outstasnding exclusive in the Daily Record, a sectatrian nature to the threats, though how that worked is a bit of a mystery.

Collum is clearly a man of deep convictions and teaches Reilgious Education at the Cardinal Newman School in Bellshill.

That he should be subjected to this - and I think we can safely assume it wasn't Rangers fans upset at his decision not to send off Anthony Stokes - is, as the Scottish Football Association rightly says, "behaviour which is abhorent and has no place in football."

But going even further back than Dallas being assaulted on the field and then attacked inside his own house, there is a pattern which has developed over the years.

I recall that when linesman George McBride flagged Jorge Cadette controversially offside in an Old Firm game at Ibrox, what followed appeared an organised campaign to blacken his name and call his integrity into question.

And during the same era there was the strange case of Jim McCluskey and the private investigators.

I was at Old Trafford on the day the story broke, and in those pre-internet days, knew nothing about it until my old chum, the late Jim Blair of the Daily Record, arrived with a copy of that day's paper which carried the tale.

It was to the effect that one of the leading lights and best known names within the Celtic Supporters Association had hired a private eye to follow McCluskey and try to dig some dirt on him ahead of an Old Firm League Cup Final.

In the media room my many English colleagues soon gathered round to read this extraordinary story and their reaction was to hoot with laughter and derision at both the petty nature of such a support, and its sinister aspect.

I've got a pal who was based in Manchester with a national daily back then, and who still operates as a reporter in the city, who often recalls it and chortles. The image of Celtic, which the club always appear so keen to project in a good way south of the border, took a battering in England over the McCluskey episode.

But coming up to date, and examining what has happened to Collum, it is worth recalling the words which were so carefully delivered by Walter Smith after his team's triumph.

According to Smith, it was wrong to put so much pressure on the official in the build up, with the Rangers manager adding tellingly, that this was the second time in the days prior to the last three Old Firm encounters this had happened.

Dougie McDonald suffered before the game in February, which Rangers won, and what was anonymously leaked from what appeared to be a Celtic source was branded as "cowardly" by SFA president George Peat.

As I have already revealed, when the official Celtic website, questioned a decision in that match by McDonald, saying no "fair minded man could agree it was right," the clear implication was that the referee was not fair. Not impartial. Not unbiased.

Therefore, he was, unfair, partial and biased.

Yet, when this was referred to Hibernian chairman Rod Petrie's General Purposes Committee, it decided a censure was appropriate, and under Petrie's orders, the decision was kept secret until I revealed it just prior to Sunday's match.

Scottish football supporters in general should be indebted to the Daily Record's Keith Jackson, whose fine reporting skills uncovered the death threats to 31-year-old family man Collum, and his kids.

And a debt from all fans is also owed to Mark Guidi who, first in the Record and then 24 hours later in the Sunday Mail, produced exclusives about the threats to Craven and his sons, and how he was poised to quit.

New SFA chief executive Stewart Regan has indeed walked into the eye of the storm at a crucial time for the future of football in Scotland.

If referees and their assistants are not allowed to go about their buisness of being without fear or favour during the match, because they are in terror for their own safetly and that of their children afterwards, then the jig is up

Indeed, not only is there something rotten at the core of Scottish football, but Scottish society in general.

Perhaps it is not so much a a footballing mess for Regan to try and sort out, as a bigger one, relating to a broken society in Scotland which needs some sort of intervention from Alex Salmond.

Unless the first minister elects to sing dumb, for fear of losing votes in the Scottish election coming up in May.

COLLUM'S HOWLER

2010-10-24T16:22:00.000+01:00

ROOKIE referee Willie Collum made a terrible mistake in the Old Firm game at Parkhead which Rangers, the better side, deserved to win.

Instead of merely booking Anthony Stokes for his disgraceful lunge which caught Sasa Papac, and led to the influential Rangers man having to be replaced, Collum should have reacted more strongly

The tackle, had it smashed into Papac later than 90 seconds from the start, would surely have resulted in Stokes being handed his marching orders.

Watch it. Watch it again, and again and again. Over and over and over again.

That is to say if you get the chance to do so on television. Do NOT expect BBC Television to give licence payers the chance to do so.

Certainly Aberdeen supporting Richard Gordon seemed to be concentrating on more pro-Celtic aspects on BBC Radio Scotland in the immediate aftermath.

According to the Rangers hating Beeb, the Rangers win was all down to an own goal, a bad kick from the Celtic goalie and a dodgy penalty.

Well, there is no doubt the penalty was dodgy. Anyone who has watched Sky's replays could see Kirk Broadfoot appearing to go down before the contact - of which there was plenty - from Daniel Majstorovic.

Collum, who had turned away as the ball came off him, also seemed to only turn back to where the action was, in time to see Broadfoot hit the deck.

Of course he could have consulted his assistant, but after the meal Celtic made out of it when Dougie McDonald did just that over a penalty award a week ago, who can blame the 31-year-old for sticking with his decision?

But had the referee sent off Stokes - as he should have - within 90 seconds of the kick off, Rangers may very well have been more than a goal ahead by that stage of the match.

It was telling that when interviewed on Sky Sports by a sympathetic Peter Martin Maguire , Neil Lennon, rather that wanting to talk too much about the spot kick award, chose to reveal he had told his Celtic players that on the day they were not good enough.

For me, that was an honest assessment, as Rangers started the better team before Celtic edged back into things and an even half hour was contested after the opening 15 minutes.

During that spell Rangers were restricted by the injury inflicted on Papac by Stokes, with the left back finally forced off.

If that Stokes over the top tackle and the contact he made was worth only a booking, then the one which led to a yellow card for Lee McCulloch, while a foul, was hardly in the same class. He got the ball and made no contact with his opponent.

Another mistake by Collum.

The trouble in the Rangers six yard area prior to the Celtic corner which led to their goal, was another instance of the referee failing to do his duty.

Georgios Samaras actually put Allen McGregor on the deck and was spoken to by Collum. The decision should have been a booking for the Greek.

More about the referee later, but back to the actual game, and Samaras caused Rangers problems in the first half with his movement, but Walter Smith clearly dealt with that in his half time team talk.

Samaras in the first half apart, Celtic did not have any really eye catching performer, although scorer Gary Hooper showed he is a chance taker supreme.

Against that, Rangers had the best player on the park, Steven Naismith. He is the most fouled player in the Champions League, and was once again the player victimised.

The number of times he was fouled by a succession of Celtic players, must have been close to - or even into - double figures.

Failing to protect him was another dereliction of duty by the young referee who fell below the standards he showed in the recent Rangers victory at Aberdeen.

However, for a remarkable fifth time this season Rangers fell behind and then rallied and went on to win. Even given their recent track record, there are few who would have backed them to do that against Celtic. At Parkhead too.

It was only the second time in 67 Old Firm encounters that the team which lost the opening goal went on to triumph.

Kenny Miller's strike to put the champions in front, was superb and, after his two terrible misses against Valencia, showed the sort of character he has. To go back in time, he is someone of whom Jock Wallace would have approved.

Wallace would have also nodded in approval at Walter Smith's post match interview, when he made the point that, after their Champions League extertions against Valencia, Rangers were understandably not at their sharpest.

Of course there are those who harp on about Smith getting an easy ride in the press because he is, in the modern idiom "media friendly."

Therefore, those who think this is poppycock, should be indebted to Charlie Nicholas on Sky. He said what it is about, is that Rangers are playing well.

On a personal level I know Lennon too is media friendly and is easy for reporters to deal with.

Also, watching the action on Sky, I was struck by how David Tanner is growing into his role as an anchor, and with Nicholas added to the mix, Sky once again showed it is head and shoulders above any other broadcaster.

Davie Provan has a great store of knowledge and never pulls a punch, while Ian Crocker commentates with a sure authority and a host of facts. One of them was that Collum is a teacher of religious studies.

Just the sort if unusual for a referee job which I thought the newspapers may have highlighted in the build up to the game.

After all, the papers were always quick to mention that Mike McCurry was a Baptist minister. Over and over and over. Again, and again and again.

SFA TRY TO KEEP CELTIC VERDICT SECRET

2010-10-23T10:55:00.002+01:00

IT is a measure of the way the Scottish Football Association operates, and the manner in which it is scrutinised by the nation's media, that the wider public is no longer made aware of decisions taken and verdicts reached by the game's governing body.

Take for instance the case of the last Old Firm game played at Ibrox, which took place as long ago as last February.

It was a turbo charged encounter with referee Dougie McDonald sending off Celtic captain Scott Brown and Maurice Edu bundling in a last minute winner for Rangers.

The fact that there were fireworks came as no surprise as, in the build up to the vital clash, Celtic, via their official website, appreared to seek to crank up the pressure on referee McDonald with an anonymous rant.

The press gave it massive coverage and SFA President George Peat was quick to respond by branding such an anonymous attack as "cowardly."

What followed in the game's aftermath led to then Celtic manager Tony Mowbray being referred to the SFA General Purposes Committee for remarks, critical of the referee.

Not long afterwards, while on international duty with the Republic of Ireland, Aiden McGeady was interviewed by a Scottish journalist and added his critical comments, and the General Purposes Committee was again called in.

However, the most widely publicised event came when the official Celtic website again leapt in, and just over an hour after the end of the match it launched a full blooded attack on Dougie McDonald's integrity.

The crux of this was that "no fair minded person" would agree with McDonald's decision to send off Brown, with the clear implication being that as McDonald had taken the red card decision, he was not fair minded.

Daily newspaper journalists working in the Ibrox media media room, filing match reports, plus stories with the views given to them by the managers and players in post match interviews, quickly became aware of the content on the official Celtic website.

Having picked up on it they then incorporated it into those reaction reports and the "no fair minded person" allegation formed the main thrust of the stories which led the back pages, from the red tops, through the middle market papers, to the broadsheets.

The general line taken by the media was that Celtic could find themselves in deep trouble with the SFA over the website attack, an natural assumption to make, especiall given president Peat's obvious disgust and anger at what had appeared there prior to the game.

But afterwards? How did the media follow up on things? Well, it would seem they all just forgot about it.

Something which had been splashed all over the back pages for a couple of days and which jammed the lines to the radio phone in programmes, just slipped off the media's radar.

Of course the increasingly secret service which is the SFA hardly helped.

In the past any decisions by the General Purposes Committee - which deals with offences such as what managers and players say in media interviews - were made public.

Now, according to my information that has changed. No news of decisions taken by the General Purposes Committee are made public.

News however, has a way of leaking out, and I can now bring you the decisions taken by the Committtee regarding what appeared on the official Celtic website, and what was said by Mowbray and McGeady.

McGeady, said the committee, had no case to answer. As far as Mowbray was concerned, by the time the committee sat in judgement, he had left Celtic and was no longer within the SFA's jurisdiction.

And, in the case of the much more serious matter of the statement published on the official Celtic website the committee decided the appropriate punishment was a censure.

Many may think this is a poor way for the Scottish Football Association to defend and protect the integrity of Scotland's officials.

A set of circumstances has come to light again this weekend via a splendid exclusive by Mark Guidi in the Daily Record which reveals that Steven Craven, the linesman at the centre of the rumpus over last Sunday's penalty decision u-turn, has been threatenen, while his two teenage sons have been subjected to verbal abuse.

Guidi's superb story also lifted the lid on just what happened between McDonald and Craven during that Dundee United-Celtic flashpoint.

According to what he wrote, it was McDonald who, on second thoughts, overturned his own decision without any input from Craven, something which now explains the mystery of why Craven moved to take up the position of a linesman at a spot kick - behind the goal line.

The Daily Record story also goes on to say that Craven feels he has been hung out to dry and used as a scapegoat by the SFA, and that he is ready to quit.

How much of his decision to stand down relates to the latest occasion in which the SFA seems to have failed to protect and official, and how much to being the latest official who - along with his family - has suffered threats and abuse after being involved in a decision which went against Celtic, is unclear.

Craven is probably weighing them both equally.

Willie Collum, his two linesmen and the fourth official, therefore know what awaits them should they be involved in any controversial decisions while taking charge of the first Old Firm game of the season.

On a wider perspective though, it will be interesting to wait and watch what the outcome is of the SFA's General Purposes Committtee's judgement on Dundee United manager Peter Houston's rant at Dougie McDonald .

And whether the committee make public any of the decisions they may take regarding the fall out from events at Tannadice.

Or indeed, whether the nation's media suffer another bout of collective amnesia.

RANGERS MISSION MAYBE NOT IMPOSSIBLE

2010-10-21T13:49:00.000+01:00

THERE must have been long queues outside dentists after so many who are loathe to acknowledge anything good about Rangers were forced to pen their praise through clenched teeth.

There must also have been a few laptops taking a fair old battering from those scribes who were forced to finally admit that this Rangers side can compete with the best.

In doing so, Rangers restored some of Scotland's tattered pride in the wake of the way the Scotland manager has gone about things with the national team...something which does not suit the agenda of some in the press pack.

But Rangers have shown Scottish football is not as bad as some doomsayers would have us all believe. And I must admit that at club level, I have come close to believing in the myth of everyone being better than poor wee Scottish sides.

It was a statistic from Tuesday nights Champions League matches which gave me pause for thought. The result was, Ajax 2, Auxerre 1, and it was the first time a Dutch side had won a Champions League match for over two years.

That's not some wee country from Eastern Europe which only joined UEFA after the Iron Curtain was breached and the Berlin Wall tumbled.

That is Holland, whose national team were the World Cup runners up in the summer. The Champions League is indeed a demanding arena.

Maybe that put into some sort of context the statistics relating to Rangers which were dug up, and emptied like manure over their head in the build up to Bursaspor's visit to Glasgow three weeks ago.

But it is ever thus with Rangers. Praise is always grudging. Also qualifued and hedged. And if there is a statistic which can be manipulated to demean the Ibrox club then it is odds on to be published somewhere.

When Walter Smith conjured an tactic which wrong footed that most street savvy of gaffers, Sir Alex Ferguson, at Old Trafford, and Rangers held to a goalless draw a Manchester United team which contained England's captain, the Scottish skipper, English Player of the Year Wayne Rooney, the man who had held that title the previous season, Welsh wizard Ryan Giggs, plus countless other internationals from around the globe, the anti Ibrox mob chose to highlight those who were not playing rather than those who were.

Next came Busaspor, and the Guardian's Glendenning saying the 3-1 offered for the Turks to win was the best bet of the night.

There were many in the press pack who agreed and piled in. And lost their dough. Rangers employed the same formation as at Old Trafford, but in a different way, and won.

Afterwards we were told that Busaspor actually were not in fact very good after all. Mmmm

And so to Matchday Three and Valencia. Spain has the only league which is a serious rival to the Premiership, and Valencia led it for two months.

On Saturday they went to the Nou Camp and were ahead for a long time before finally being edged out 2-1 by Barcelona. There can be no debate about their pedigree.

And no debate either about the merit of the way Rangers performed ,and the claim that on another night at least one of the two chances missed by Kenny Miller, the brace squandered by Stevie Naismith and the one ballooned over by Ricky Foster, would have gone in.

On the other hand, Valencia, as anyone would expect of such a terrific team, had their moments, notably near the end when Allan McGregor saved magnificently after Maurice Edu's lapse of concentration.

The game was an epic. One of the best I have seen at Ibrox in half a century of watching European action there.

The previous night I was enthralled and engrossed as Real Madrid saw off AC Milan. It was a smashing match. Real were impressive, and as they get more used to that master tactician, Joe Mourinho, will get even better. What a joy it would be to see Walter Smith pit his wits against wee Jose.

Wednesday's encounter was even more entertaining, more absorbing and was played at a pace more like an old fashioned English cup tie than the cat and mouse stuff of the European stage.

Valencia, in the Spanish style, played many more passes and had a higher success rate with them than Rangers.

Rangers completed 269 passes, with a success rate of 67per cent against Valencia's success rate of 82per cent and 589 completed passes.

Many of Valencia's completed passes were made square in defence and in midfield were short, while Rangers, though never just hoofing it, employed the more direct approach, which remains a potent weapon for British teams when employed with the sort of intelligence Rangers showed.

Of course Rangers have been here before at the halfway stage of a Champions League group, with qualification a possibility, only for the backside to fall out of the Ibrox world. Three years ago is the most recent example.

Third spot and a place in the Europe League is surely a more realistic target, though what was once Mission Impossible is now within the realms of the possible - if still not probable.

At the outset of their campaign, I thought Rangers might be lucky to improve on the two points they managed last year, and even after a victory over Bursaspor added three to the one smuggled out of Old Trafford, my belief was that they may not pick up another.

Now, after three matches, the Scottish Champions have five points, and have proved Scottish football is not as bad as some would have us believe.

In the process, Rangers have also provided plenty of work for dentists, after so many of those who were forced to praise them did so through gritted teeth.

SCOTLAND OR EUROPE

2010-10-20T09:42:00.000+01:00

THE dilemma facing Rangers this season is one both they and Celtic have faced before. It is whether to concentrate resources on making an impression on Europe, or husband them for the home front.

This time last year what had turned into a disastrous Champions League campaign for the Scottish title holders, allowed them to push on when it came to retaining their crown, something which was of course helped by the way Tony Mowbray's reign imploded at Parkhead.

There is no doubt - nor has there ever been - in my mind, that a similar Celtic collapse this time out will not happen as there is a great deal more resolution and determination in the camp now.

Plus of course the fact that Celtic's failure to qualify for any sort of European football this term has left Neil Lennon with a single focus...the Scottish Premier League Championship.

Whatever he says about missing those Euro nights - and he will be missing them - in his first season as manager it is actually a bonus for him that he does not have to fight on two fronts.

Smith's great experience enables him to see the wider picture, but he must be aware of what happened just over two years ago when Rangers fell between the two stools of the UEFA Cup and the title.

It was something which happened to Celtic seven years ago, and they finished with nothing, as opposed to the two domestic cups which made 2008 more successful for Smith and Rangers than 2003 was for Martin O'Neill's side.

This season though the outcome of the title race may have even deeper and longer lasting consequences for the winner and loser.

For, with Smith confirming his retirement in May, and with Ally McCoist the favourite to succeed him, the balance of managerial experience will switch in the summer.

And if Lennon, in his first full season in charge, can take the title and stop the Ibrox bid for three-in-a-row, the extra confidence he will gain from that could be a vital factor in his contest with McCoist.

However, should Smith present Rangers and McCoist with the crown, then his legacy would be to hand McCoist a huge boost.

Of course all of this constitutes many an if, quite a few buts and a sprinkling of maybes.

This though, in my view, could prove to be a decisive season for what happens to both halves of the Old Firm in the immediate future.

For Celtic, it is a case of win the title and halt Rangers, at the same time giving Lennon the upper hand against an Ibrox manager who, for all the experience he has gained working with Smith, will be learning to be a boss for the first time.

Against that, should the crown stay at Ibrox, the seed of doubt about Lennon's ability to finally wrest the initiative from Rangers will be planted.

Which is why any dilemma those at Rangers may feel about progressing in Europe, against concentrating on domestic success, should surely be resolved, with the home front being given the same priority Celtic, through their different circumstances, are able to.

Which means Sunday's first Old Firm encounter of the season is even more fascinating than these initial matches usually are.

In recent years possibly only in 2000, O'Neill's first meeting with Rangers, and then 2006 when Paul Le Guen encountered Celtic for the first time, were as telling for the future.

Celtic won both. And everyone knows what O'Neill went on to achieve on the back of that. And also what happened to Le Guen.

AN HONEST MAN

2010-10-18T14:58:00.000+01:00

AN honest man , as Rabbie wrote, is the noblest work of God. So referee Dougie McDonald should step forward to be acknowledged as such.

McDonald, for instance, could have taken the easy way out at Tannadice by sticking to his original decision to award Celtic a penalty kick, despite the intervention of linesman Steven Craven.

Just think, regardless of what Craven told him, McDonald could have confirmed the award, and all would have continued happily, with the spotlight on the players and not him.

That though would not only have been the coward's way out, it would also have been extremely dishonest of McDonald. For by his reversal he clearly did believe the linesman was better positioned to see what happened, and that Craven was therefore able to give him information not previously in his possession.

It was a brave bit of refereeing, and also proved McDonald to be an extremely fair minded man.

If there was an error in the incident it happened when Craven, on seeing McDonald point to the spot, made his way to the position behind the goal, taken up by assistants at a spot kick, before attracting the referee's attention.

What Craven should have done is stand his ground, raise his flag, and let the ref know in his earpiece just what his view was.

Television pictures clearly showed that Gary Hooper was fouled by Kenneth before he got in on keeper Dusan Pernis, but retained his balance and possession of the ball, leading to McDonald making the snap judgement of applying the advantage, as refs are told to.

Equally television also clearly showed that when the keeper went down at the Celtic man's feet he made contact with the ball first and his momentum meant contact with the player followed.

For where McDonald was, although closer to the action than the linesman, he nevertheless did not have as clear a view as Craven, whose angle was better, despite the difference in distance.

For all of that, it is understandable that the Celtic bench were in such a state of high emotion. It is not very often a referee points to the spot, only to change his mind.

That this was Dougie McDonald, and that this was Celtic, it is invetiable that the conspiracy theorists would draw their own conclusions. And just as inevitable they would be the wrong ones.

The fall out from the flashpoint has already been considerable, though goodness knows just how much more it would have been had Dundee United held on for a draw, to put the first blemish on Celtic's SPL record.

And, while staying on the fair minded theme, that would not have been a just reflection of the way the game was played, as Celtic did the bulk of the attacking and looked slick, swift and exciting, if less than the lethal finishers Neil Lennon would wish them to be.

Twenty four hours earlier Lennon had been at Ibrox to see Rangers beat Motherwell 4-1, and show dead-eyed finishing with three goals in a four minute second half spell.

He will be warning his team this week of the movement up front of Kenny Miller and Kyle Lafferty, plus the sparkling form of Steven Naismith, not to mention the range of danger carried by Steven Davis.

And when Walter Smith begins his look at Celtic, after the Champions League encounter with Valencia, there are plenty of new things about Lennon's team to give him food for thought, notably the fine form of Hooper, who has that instinctive nose for goal which is such a vital part of any striker's armoury.

That, plus the swift switching of positions which makes Georgios Samaras so hard to pin down, and the shrewd passing from midfielder Cha Du-Ri, make Lennon's team a far more formidable force than the Tony Mowbray outfit of last term.

Sunday's first Old Firm set-to of the season , with both teams entering it in proud possession if a 100per cent SPL record, is indeed shaping up to be a fascinating affair.

Let us all therefore hope that the talking points next Monday morning concern the relative merits of both teams and have nothing to do with the referee.

Willie Collum will take charge, and after the way he handled the explosive nature of the recent Aberdeen-Rangers fixture, getting this even more powderkeg one could be seen as a reward.

All that anyone can ask of any referee is that he calls it as he sees it gets most of the big decisions right, and that if either of his assistants, who he believes have a better view, draw his attention to a contrary view, the man in charge is brave enough to change his decision.

Nothing could be more courageous or fair minded than that.

LENNON AND SMITH AGREE

2010-10-17T18:29:00.000+01:00

NEIL LENNON needed no urging to join the debate over the secret way the Scottish Football Association go about dispensing what they call justice.

The Celtic manager was expressing his disgust at the lack of open honesty about the way the SFA go about things at more or less the same time as Walter Smith was explaining to me just how in the dark Rangers have been kept over the Allan McGregor affair.

GREEGSGATE!

Smith told me that neither he not anyone at Rangers had been told just who it was at the SFA who decided the incident involving the goalkeeper in the match with Aberdeen should be referred to the the SFA's clandestine Video Review Panel.

The conversation took place at Murray Park at the same time as Lennon was holding court at Lennoxtown and asserting to reporters that if anybody makes a complain against any one of his players he would want to know who it was.

By the time what Smith said appeared on radio and televsion the new SFA chief executive Stewart Regan blundered in, in a manner which suggested he was unsure about what was going on.

For instance, according to the man in the Hampden hot seat, the identity of the ex- player, former manager and retired referee who sit on the panel has to be kept secret in order that their decision is seen to be impartial.

Jeez, that's a good 'un!

Surely the exact opposite is the case, and if Regan is so keen on the whole thing being seen to be impartial then the best way is to come out from behind the SFA's very own version of the Iron Curtain and let everyone know just who is involved.

If there is nothing to hide, then why hide it?

Regan also went on to disclose that any incident referred to the Video Review Panel is the job of someone in the SFA Referees' Department of the Disciplinary Department.

But who? A penpusher? A computer whizzkid? A wee lassie? Surely any such decision should be taken by someone who is fully qualified in the game's laws. Now, who falls into that category? Mmmmmm? Yes, got it!

A REFEREE!

Lennon and Smith both agree with the basic wrongness of the current system, with Lennon chosing to highlight the point I made last week about justice being seen to be done.

Maybe the Celtic manager is one of my growing army of regular readers. Which would not in the least surprise me.

He likes to keep himself up to date with all aspects of his job, and by visiting Ibrox to watch Rangers against Motherwell ahead of the Old Firm match, Lennon showed how thorough he is as a manager.

However, to return to the Scottish Football Association and it's declared love of secrecy. This is a body which is willing to take money from the taxpayer, and indeed wants Alex Salmond to give them more.

Therefore, there may be a case for trying to discover what it is that goes on behind the closed, locked a bolted doors of the SFA's sixth floor headquarters at Hampden by way of a request through the Freedom of Information Act.

For the culture of secrecy is growing within the SFA, with the Rod Petrie chaired General Purposes Committee no longer releasing what its punishments are regarding managers, players, or indeed any official club source, including websites, when offensive language is used.

Maybe Petrie thinks the SFA should be run the way he runs Hibernian. If he does, he is wrong. At Easter Road he has an owner, Tom Farmer, to whom he is accountable, and nobody else.

The SFA is the national body made up of all the clubs, and all the associations right down to grassroots level, as well as it's responsility of running the national team. Does the word national not give Petrie a wee clue as to who the SFA is responsible to? If not, let me tell him. And tell the new boy Regan too.

IT'S THE NATION!

Neil Lennon and Walter Smith appear to be at one with me on that.

GUARDIAN'S ANONYMOUS ATTACK ON RANGERS

2010-10-15T22:54:00.000+01:00

ANONYMOUS is here there and everywhere. And now it would appear He She or It, has joined that old red rag, the Guardian.

It isn't long since I highlighted some chancer on the paper by the name of Glendenning, who had branded Rangers - the club that is, not the supporters - as Huns.

Now the latest attack has by the paper, which the great Richard Littlejohn so accurately branded, one of the "unpopulars," has been directed at the Ibrox club's fans, and features the biggest managerial failure in Rangers long history, Paul Le Guen.

Now - to quote Private Eye - as any fule know, Rangers got rid of the French flop almost four years ago after a short period because he showed, beyond debate, that he was ill equipped to handle the task handed to him by Sir David Murray.

It was something I had predicted four years past in February when it was first announced Le Guen was to succeed the successful Alex McLeish.

My view was based on research of his record, the resources he had needed for his undoubted success in France, and the circumstances in which he had managed.

My conclusion was that he would not have similar resources at Ibrox nor would the circumstances there be anything like what he had experienced in France, and that he was, therefore, the wrong man for the job.

It was a view which flew in the face of popular opinion and united most Rangers supporters against me when I expressed it at the time when LeggoLand was published in the old fashioned print form.

Press pack pals thought I had gone bonkers, despite me explaining my reasoning, while Ibrox season ticket holders among my Partick pals just did not want to listen.

In common with Rangers supporters everywhere, they bought into Murray's poetic prediction of riding a Le Guen moonbeam to glory.

Their almost fanatical belief in him was there for all to see when Le Guen took a bow in front of the Ibrox crowd for the first time.

The splendid red, white and blue Tricolour of France flew in all corners of Ibrox and the crowd loudly and lustily belted out the tune of that most magnificent of anthems, La Marseillaise. Stirring stuff!

I do not think I can recall a new Rangers manager getting a more vigorous reception. Not Jock Wallace when he returned, or the legend that is John Greig when he stepped up from the captaincy, not Graeme Souness, or even the second coming of Walter Smith, when he replaced Le Guen.

Rangers supporters believed Le Guen was the man to make them a force and any thought of the Frenchman not being what the Guardian's Mister or Ms Anonymous called, "Rangers-minded" never entered the head of anyone I met.

It did not seem to be present among the crowd whose welcome for Le Guen was loud, long and genuine.

Yet, with a fine and blatant disregard for these facts, the Guardian has chosen to use a fairytale in the London Times, linking Le Guen with the vacant manager's job at Hibernian, as a sorry and sordid excuse to try and blacken the name of Rangers again.

What appeared in an Anonymous article in a Guardian supplement gave a perfect example of why so many folk do not trust this ailing and failing newspaper to tell the truth.

This is the libel - for that is what it is - which appeared in the Guardian supplement....

"Paul le Guen, formerly of Rangers, but not considered 'Rangers-minded' by the more confused denizens of Ibrox, could take over at the significantly greener, Hibernian."

Just pause for a moment, go back and read that again. Rangers supporters reading this may care to take a deep breath, pause for another moment and then go back and read that outrageous lie again.

They may then feel like going to Google and researching the Press Complaints' Commission.

Perhaps the Guardian's Anonymous is getting confused with his clubs. Perhaps he is thinking of the view expressed by the veteran journalist and long time acute Parkhead watcher, Hugh Keevins - who makes a welcome return to Sunday column duty with the Sunday Mail this weekend - and his view that there may have been many Parkhead fans who did not take to Gordon Strachan due to a lack of what was described as his Celtic DNA.

This opinion was given at a time when, under Strachan, Celtic had won one title, were on their way to a second successive championship, and before he managed them to a third, the first man to do so since Jock Stein.

Or - and maybe you believe this is the more likely scenario - Mister or Ms Anonymous in the Guardian, was just venting their spleen against Rangers and their supporters, because that is the sort of stance which is expected of such a newspaper.

It has certainly never been kind to the Ibrox club, dating back to the time when current Celtic director, Brian Wilson, was its Scottish football correspondent for a decade from the mid 1970s to the 80s.

But - and this includes Glendenning's Huns slur - this latest ,absolutely without any basis of foundation libel, should be the last straw.

The very least that should happen is that the Guardian should be put under pressure to unmask the He, She or It who is to good reporting what Subo is to singing.

And the first step in that direction is reporting the Guardian to the Press Complains Commission.

THE RANGERS IMAGE PROBLEM

2010-10-14T13:01:00.001+01:00

LIVERPOOL supporters must be looking on in horror at the court room battles and legal wrangles surrounding the ownership of the club they support.

However, in contrast to what Rangers fans have suffered, and continue to suffer regarding the sale of their club, the Scousers are getting an easy ride, with the Royal Bank of Scotland appearing to give the club greater support and understanding than seems to have been forthcoming for Rangers from Lloyds

Maybe that has got something to do with the fact there are plenty of folk out there who are lining up to try to buy the Anfield outfit. Just as there was no shortage of interested parties when Manchester City went on the market.

But, despite some big talking by some, which proved to be all hat and no cattle, and other shadowy and equally lacking in substance parties, nobody with the cash needed wants to buy Rangers.

Which begs the question...

WHY?

For at the moment, with debts of around £25M and falling, and with the way the market stands, Rangers could be bought for a knockdown price.

Of course the revenue stream available to such as Liverpool, City, Aston Villa and the others in England, from massive Sky pay outs, plus megabucks via the Champions League, is not available to Rangers.

Though, and even given the fact they suffer the problem of being a big club in a small country, Rangers remain a club with a massive tradition and they could provide a terrific platform for anyone who wished to own a big football club.

Someone whose resources cannot compete with the Americans who are flooding into the market south of the border, or the others from various countries, but who, nevertheless, has substantial means. Indeed, right now Rangers represent a massive bargain. Almost a steal.

So again the question must be posed. Two years after Sir David Murray first made it known Rangers were up for grabs, still no serious and acceptable bid has been made....

WHY?

And the answer.......

Well, Rangers, whether they like it or not, have an image problem. A difficulty brought on by Murray's refusal to take on those whose actions suggest they have nothing else on their journalistic agenda than wishing to damage Rangers.

Nobody needs names spelled out here. Everybody knows who the leading light is... and who his wee handmaidens are.

Would that this campaigner against Rangers was so dilligent in his day-today duties for his ailing paper - at least it is in Scotland - once known as the Thunderer, and once upon a time highly regarded as a paper of record.

For instance, the day before Rangers played Manchester United, he was nowhere to be seen in the splendid Old Trafford, Europa Suite as the reporters from every other daily newspaper who had travelled south, sat down in what was a pre official UEFA press conference briefing to them from Walter Smith.

Is there nobody among the ranks of his superiors in London - where the Scottish sports operation is run from - who know what a mug he is making of them?

Or does the Scottish editor either not know, or not care? Or is he too busy lunching with Richard Holloway, a friend of both the editor and the anti Rangers sports writer?

This man has consistently attacked Rangers supporters for some of the songs he says he hears them singing, while he has with equal consistency, failed to hear any of the offensive songs belted out by the followers of any other club.

Now, not for a moment do I think all Rangers supporters are blameless for the plight their club is in, and I have the record of a column I wrote four years ago attacking them for getting the club into trouble over their singing of the "Billy Boys."

In it, I told them to stop it and coined the slogan - FTP-RIP. It appeared in the newspaper I worked for at the time.

Maybe that was because it fell in with the ethos of that paper's owners, Trinity Mirror, whose flagship paper, the Daily Mirrior, once splashed with a TROOPS OUT! demand at the height of he IRA bombing campaign on the British mainland and in Northern Ireland.

Therefore, my credentials of being balanced and objective are clearly established. Not so the man from the Times.

Fortunately his influence wanes with every plunge in that paper's circulation in Scotland since he joined, just as the Herald's sales figures hit the skids when he was there.

However, the damage he has done to Rangers remains, and that is part of the problem - though not, as I have said, all of it - Murray is encountering as he tries to find a credible buyer.

Murray indeed is also part of the problem. During his period as chairman - and through the spell when he vacated the chair but remained the most influential figure in the boardroom - there were many inside Ibrox who wanted to pick a fight with those they saw as being fervently anti Rangers.

My information is Murray often sat in his Charlotte Square office and listened to their plans, gave them the go-ahead, only to call to cancel that green light before whoever it was he had spoken to, had reached the Maybury Roundabout.

You reap what you sow, the Bible tells us, and Murray, by failing to stop what appears as a systematic campaign aimed at the club he owns, now finds it hard to find the buyer he so wants to unearth.

Eventually though someone will come forward. Someone with shrewd enough business acumen to spot the nature of the bargain which is Rangers.

When that happens there are plenty of people within Ibrox who will be only too happy to point the new owner in the right direction when it comes to those who seem to harbour hatred for Rangers.

The Bible will be proved right in then end. It always is.

SCOTLAND - THE REALITY

2010-10-13T10:29:00.000+01:00

ONCE upon a time Scotland came unstuck against smaller nations because we underestimated them. Now we have come full circle and, under Craig Levein, do badly against them because he overestimates them.

When it comes to the glittering stars of the world game, Scottish teams have always been able to, at the very least, hold their own, and on many a memorable occasion actually put one over on them. Think England, Spain, France, and Holland, for example.

Holding their own and giving them a game of it was what this Scottish side managed, before going down to European and World champions, Spain.

The players should be given credit for the way they regrouped themselves, took responsibility for themselves, and showed us what many have always believed - they are better than Levein seems to think they are.

Therefore the managers's post match rant that he was there to correct anyone who said the effort the players put in during the pathetic 1-0 defeat by the Czech Republic was anything less than exceptional.

Such a comment was an attempt to rewrite history and claim what was written and said of a critical nature, about what happened in Prague, had been aimed at the players.

It was not. It had been directed at the proper target - the manager!

Levein may also have appeared to television viewers to be not merely lacking in good grace, but actually boorish, when he stormed out for an interview with Sky's David Tanner because he didn't like one of the perfectly polite and proper questions the highly experienced, polished and professional Tanner asked.

Do I possibly detect that the question regarding his highly questionable 4-6-0 formation in Prague has him quite so prickly because, deep down, he knows he blundered.

Just as he did in Lithuania when he overestimated a pretty mundane team, was too cautious and left with a single point when all three were there for the taking.

Here is something to ponder. The team which started in Prague contained six of the outfield players who did so well against Holland at Hampden a mere 13 months ago. They were Alan Hutton, Steven Whittaker, Stephen McManus, Davie Weir, Darren Fletcher and Stevie Naismith.

Two others, Shaun Maloney ,and more controversially, Kenny Miller, were available, but benched while the only two injured were Scott Brown and Paul Hartley. Allan McGregor instead of David Marshall in goal, strengthened the side.

As I said, it was not the players who were at fault. It was Levein. His tactics were not just wrong. They were wrong headed.

The same was the case in Kaunus where he did not trust six of the outfield players who started in that never-to-be-forgotten win over France in Paris, to beat Lithuania.

Hutton, McManus, Weir, Fletcher, Brown and Lee McCulloch were the six, while the goalscoring hero who shot down the French, James McFadden was benched.

These are players who under Alex McLeish, Walter Smith before him, and even when George Burley was in charge against Holland, showed they can be up to the task.

They showed it again against Spain. They can be trusted to defend carefully, to contest the midfield, even against those Spanish pass masters, and more importantly, to attack with intelligence, with pace, and when the time is right.

For me, the way those players expressed their own ability against Spain, may have had something to do with their response to what many may have seen as an insult to their ability by Levein.

He did not seem to think they were good enough, and could be trusted enough, to beat Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Games many thought the Scots should have been trying to win.

When the section was drawn nobody ever believed Scotland would beat Spain, even at Hampden, though I always harboured the thought we could give them a game of it, a run for their money, and then, who knows, maybe point.

It was in the matches away to Lithuanian and the Czech Republic, and when Liechtenstein visited Glasgow, that I expected a rich harvest of points. As it is, Levein has managed a meagre 4 points out of 12 to lie in third place. And it is his tactics - not the players - to blame.

Let's be generous and gloss over the performance against Liechtenstein as just one of those things Scotland managers down through the years have had to contend with. The Scots won.

But no similar genorisity should be allowed regarding the 5 points given away in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Those are games which, with the right approach from Levein, the players at his disposal could have won.

That would have given Scotland 9 points out of 12 and put them at least in second position, and maybe even ahead of Spain, whose 9 points come from only 3 games.

It is, though, the second placed nations in all the groups we should be looking at . And remembering the chance which has been blown to avoid the difficulty of qualifying through a play off.

For the best runners up from the nine groups will earn an automatic place in the finals of the Euro '12 in Poland and the Ukraine. That seems to have been forgotten by many. Just as it is being ignored that one of the only two realistic chances of qualifying, has now been blown.

At the moment, Hungary, with 9 points from four outings, lead the way. Scotland could - indeed should - have been up their alongside them.

That is what should be being examined by the critics nationwide. That is what should be being put under the miscroscope. That is the area in which Levein has let the Scots down, the area in which his judgement should be scrutinised.

Anything else, by anyone - especially Levein's wee Silly Billy lackey - would be a betrayal of the nation.

Just don't hold your breath for it though.

REMEMBRANCE AND FOOTBALL

2010-10-12T10:05:00.000+01:00

WHEREVER you are, whatever you are doing, and whatever opinion you are free to express, we are once again approaching the time of year when we remember those whose sacrifice grants us the freedom to do all of those things.

Of course chosing what football team to support and going to watch them and encourage them in their efforts is just one of the many freedoms - however trivial - we and the people of so many other countries enjoy. And take for granted.

Which is why it is correct that as a week of Remembrance approaches and we prepare to wear our poppies, not only with pride, but also with humble gratitude, football should play its part in giving thanks.

In the past though, any request for a simply act of Remembrance and homage to the fallen, has somehow sparked off controversial debate and protest in Scotland.

No wonder, as some of my buddies will testify, I often refer to my homeland as a dark wee country.

South of the border they do things differently, and in England football joins the rest of this nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in remembering the fallen.

Television pictures from all the matches in the Premiership show crowds of up to 75,000 falling silent for a minute.

Up here though, that is not always the case. Four years ago, when Celtic played St Mirren at the old Love Street on Remembrance Sunday, there was no silence. The St Mirren chairman, Stewart Gilmour later said it was an oversight.

Let us just think about that crass admission for just a moment or two. A quiet moment or two. In the midst of all those poppies, the night after the Festival of Remembrance from the Royal Albert Hall had been shown live on television, and following the Queen leading the nation in an act of Remembrance at the Cenotaph - also live on television - Stewart Gilmour forgot it was Remembrance Sunday.

Clearly, by his actions, we will FORGET them is Gilmour's mantra.

Celtic are due to visit St Mirren's new ground on November 14this this year, Remembrance Sunday, in a match which will be broadcast live by ESPN. Gilmour remains the St Mirren chairman. Perhaps this year someone will remind him of the day's significance.

There have been other occasions too when things have not been right. Such as two years ago when Celtic played at home and, according to the club tannoy announcer, the crowd were asked to show their appreciation in what he described as the "Celtic Way" by joining in a minute's applause.

Let me state right here, that I was not the only journalist in the press box who chose not to applaud, but to stand in bare-headed silence.

And let me also make it clear also that there were plenty of Celtic supporters in the areas around the press box, season ticket holders and corporate backers, who did likewise.

Maybe their personal memories were off a dad or grandad, an uncle or brother who, had first taken them to watch Celtic when they were small, and who had fought in either of the 20th century's two world wars.

Or perhaps they were thinking of a son or a daughter, a nephew or niece, a brother or sister, a friend, or the son or daughter of a friend, Celtic fans all, who have fallen more recently, or who are still serving on the front line.

Or maybe they were just giving their own quiet thanks for their freedom to be at Parkhead and support Celtic. A freedom won by the fallen they were honouring.

Whatever their personal thoughts, they vastly outnumbered the small group of protestors, away to the right of the main stand ,who had objected to Celtic, in common with all other SPL clubs, wearing a poppy on their shirts.

Both sections though were even more vastly outnumbered by the 50,000 or so who followed Celtic's official instruction and applauded.

Last year, on Remembrance Sunday, Celtic travelled to Falkirk, and according to one highly informed source, who is close to the Falkirk boardroom, chairman Martin Ritchie understood Celtic would have liked Falkirk to ditch their preferred minute's silence in favour of a round of applause.

It is to his, and his club's eternal credit that Falkirk chose to attempt to honour the fallen in a quiet and dignified way.

That they could not, and that the silence was broken by booing and singing from travelling supporters, was Scotland's Shame, and one of the reasons why I often despair of the land of my birth as a dark wee country.

It was also Sky Sports' shame that they masked the sound of this shameful episde by muting the it, though the booing could be clearly heard on foreign channels and on BBC Radio Scotland.

Sky then tried to explain this piece of blatant censorship by claiming they did not want to offend anyone. Sky Sports and Sky News are both in the business of journalism. Censorship is what all news organisations and all journalists should fight against, not collude in applying.

Remember the horrific picture from the Vietnam war of the little girl running naked and in pain and terror from wounds from the napalm bombing?

I DO!

It was offensive, but it did much to heighten people's understanding of what was going on, giving power to the aruguments of those who wanted it stopped.

Therefore, should the silence be broken at any ground this year, we, the nation, have a right to hear it, and all media organisations, be they television, radio or newspapers, have a duty to report it.

However, let us hope that on Saturday November 13 and Sunday 14th, when at Ibrox, where Rangers meet Aberdeen, at Tannadice, where Dundee United face Kilmarnock, at Hamilton, where Inverness are the visitors, at Easter Rd, where Motherwell visit, at McDiarmid Park, where St Johnstone face Hearts, and in Paisley, where Celtic travel to play against St Mirren, in a match beamed live on ESPN throughout Britain, silence falls for a minute for an act of Remembrance.

It would be Scotland's Shame - yet again, - if anything other were to happen.

ALLAN McGREGOR AND THE SFA

2010-10-11T11:49:00.001+01:00

WINSTON CHURCHILL once turned his magnificent oratory on Russia, describing it as an enigma, wrapped in a riddle and shrouded in a mystery.

If the Greatest Ever Briton was alive today, and if he turned his attention to more mundane matters, then he may well have used the same words to decribe the Scottish Football Association.

Now, not for a moment do I believe George Peat and Stewart Regan favour the the killing grounds of Stalin's Gulags, but they do seem to have a similar liking for secrecy.

WHY?

For surely if you have nothing to hide, why hide it?

It would appear though, within the sixth floor at Hampden there exists an increasingly small cabal of men who hold power, and who do not favour justice being seen to be done.

Many may believe that Hibernian 's Rod Petrie, who is chairman of the General Purposes Committee, is seeking to run it behind the same Iron Curtain of secrecy with which he runs Hibs.

Why this should be so is indeed an enigma. And a riddle. A mystery too.

Take the case of the one match ban given to Rangers goalkeeper Allan McGregor. What he did in the match against Aberdeen when he aimed a kick - which missed - at Chris Maguire, was not merely stupid. And not only unnecessary.

IT WAS AN ACT OF LUNACY!

McGregor deserved to be punished, if only for being so stupid, especially after his disgraceful antics in the match against Hibs a few weeks ago.

If his action had been spotted at the time he would surely have been sent off, and Rangers chances of staging their remarkable fightback to win would have followed him down the tunnel.

There should be no blame attached to Willie Collum, who refereed a difficult encounter better than I've seen any other official perform this season. Nor should either linesman or the fourth official carry the can. They can't have eyes in the back of their heads.

Nor should there be any sidetracking by referring to the incident involving Derek Young's stamp on Lee McCulloch.

In effect, and despite what many Rangers supporters may think, McGregor got what he deserved. You have to feel sorry for Walter Smith, who once remarked that one Andy Goram in any manager's career is more than enough.

Goram though, for all his off the field high jinks, did not behave on it as McGregor has on too many occasions.

In my view, and I say it again to underline the opinion, McGregor got exactly what he deserved. It may help him to learn his lesson. But don't bet on it.

So there it is, my view, clearly stated and with not only my name, but my picture too, at the top to make it clear who I am. There's nothing anonymous or anything secret about it.

Unlike the SFA's Video Review Panel which acts in the shadows like some sort of furtive spy operating behind enemy lines.

Let's start at the beginning. The McGregor incident occurs, the match officials all miss it, but it is highlighted on Sky by Andy Walker and forms a great deal of the Monday morning newspaper coverage of the match.

What follows is a prolonged period of silence, with the news that McGregor had been reported to the SFA not emerging until Thursday of last week.

We are not told who made the report. The SFA referees' supervisor? The SPL delegate? A paperclip counter at the SFA? Wee Shuggie frae Shettleston?

And so the enigma becomes a riddle, which is a mystery to all but that small cabal.

Then there is the ten day delay. One report claimed the reason was George Peat was on holiday and that Stewart Regan had not taken up his post as chief executive, therefore there was no executive present within the SFA to instigate proceedings.

Although that report carried no direct quote from anyone at the SFA. Secrecy again!

What we were told is that a three man Video Review Panel, of an ex referee, an ex player and an ex manager , and chaired by Sandy Stables of the Aberdeenshire and District FA, would sit in judgement.

We were not told who the former player, referee and manager were. Why? It is inconcievable that any of the three had a Rangers connection. Or a Motherwell connection, as that is the team McGregor will be absent against.

Or, despite the fact the chairman was Sandy Stables from the Aberdeenshire and District FA, any of the three would have an Aberdeen connection, given the fact the incident happened against the Dons.

Surely too, the SFA would know the problems they would be piling up for themselves if either an ex Celtic player or manager judged a Rangers player.

So that's Rangers, Motherwell, Aberdeen and Celtic removed from the equation. So just who did sit on the Video Review Panel?

Justice, should not merely be done....it should be SEEN to be done.

Anything else merely opens the door for all the crackpots and conspiracy theorists out there who think everyone is against their club.

When Churchill was talking about Russia, he was using the contemporary term for the Soviet Union, where the dictators used secrecy to stay in power. The SFA would do well to remember what happened to it in the end.

GOEBBELS OR ANONYMOUS

2010-10-09T09:05:00.001+01:00

JOSEF GOEBBELS was the evil genius who was Adolf Hitler's Propaganda Minister during Nazi Germany's tyrannical genocide .

He was a thoroughly disgusting, odious and evil man. But he was, in the dark arts of spin doctoring, most certainly a genius.

The Goebbels technique was simple. He believed that if you told the biggest lie possible, and told it often enough, people would believe it.

It is a technique of spin doctoring which is still alive and well to this day, and many believe it was one of the reasons the now totally discredited New Labour government held on to power for so long.

But Goebbels, and the less evil, but nevertheless still odious pratctioners of the dark art - Damian McBride, Jo Moore, Charlie Wheelan and Alistair Campbell among them - have a new recruit to their ranks.

He is called Anonymous.

Now, regular readers will know I always refrain from repsonding to comments, as many of them, which appear to come from a small but dedicated group of folk with little regard to the truth or facts, are not worth bothering about.

So too are the many equally inaccurate jibes about me on a personal level. Even those who approve of my writing style will never sing, there's only one David Leggat, for there are quite obviously a lot more folk named David Leggat.

There also appears, to my trained eye, to be some sort of concerted campaign by the enemies of truth and reasonable free speech, to try and goad me into making some sort of outrageous statement.

It's almost as though there is one "mind" behind it, orchestrating and directing. Maybe even script writing too. But sorry, whoever you are, your attempts will win no Oscar. Not even a Tony.

However, I do wish to turn to the comments posted at the end of my blog JELAVIC'S INJURY, which went up on the LeggoLand site on Wednesday, 6th October.

In it, I mentioned the removal of a film clip of Ian Black's tackle on Jelavic from YouTube by the SPL, and added that this is the same SPL which has ordered Rangers to play five away matches following the six of their Champions League ties. I asked if a pattern could be detected?

Enter Anonymous, posting a comment on October 6 at 16.48, which followed the Goebbells technique and attempted to tell the big lie, while at the same time seeking to justify the lie by trying to smear my journalistic integrity and ability.

According to this particular Anonymous: "The SPL fixture list is computer generated at random, and is drawn up months before the Champions League draw is made. A little thought about facts may have made you come across as a slightly credible journalist instead of being small minded and lacking in journalistic training."

OUCH!

Well, no, actually. This big lie is easily shot down by showing both my credibility as a journalist of 44 years experience, plus my journalistic training.

You see, the official UEFA webite first revealed the schedule of dates on which Champions League matches would be played during season 2010-11, on Monday, APRIL, 19, 2010.

The schedule of Scottish Premier League fixtures for season 2010-11 was published on JUNE, 17th, 2010.

Good! I'm glad we've cleared that up and shown the big lie to be just what it is.

A WHOPPER!

And as for the claim the SPL fixtures are completely computer generated at random.... That is so very stupid that anyone who makes such a claim needs the truth explained to him very slowly indeed.

Computers do nothing by themselves. They have to be programmed and given human direction. There is nothing random about a computer. It takes human instruction.

How, for instance, when the SPL decided to have the Old Firm match played over the New Year period, did the computer generate that? All by itself, and at random?

PRECISELY!

I refer all of the above to another, who I suspect may belong to the same circus as Anonymous and the man who will never win an Oscar. Or a Tony!

This guy - or is it a gal? - calls themselves Daytripper. Daytripper's comment was that I seemed to struggle with the facts.

No, just in explaining them in such a way that even the lowest common denominator will be able to understand. A thankless task, and one I freely admit is often beyond me.

But then again, just what is it Daytripper is tripping on?

And so let us return to the original point made in JELAVIC'S INJURY, the one I made about BBC seeming reluctant to show it over, and over, and over, again, and again and again, and that the SPL had had it removed from YouTube.

Another Anonymous - they're a big clan - commented on 6th October, at 14.08, that anyone with a computer could find a clip of it.

I am indeed indebted to him, for it led to me sound the bugle call for reinforcements, in the shape of a young and much more computer literate pal. He found it on the link k21swj.gif

I watched it over and over and over, and again, and again and again. You should too. See what you think.

Just don't tell Anonymous. Or he'll reach for his Goebbels manual and try to make you believe another big lie.

Anyway, we all know what happened to the evil and odious Nazi Minister for Propoganda. Don't we?

MORE TARTAN ARMY SHAME

2010-10-08T11:55:00.000+01:00

IMAGINE, if you would for a moment, that a plane load of Rangers fans were said to be so drunk by an airline that they were refused permission to board their flight.

Think of the headlines in the tabloids - RANGERS BOOZED BIGOTS BANNED - is one headline which springs to mind as a possible if such a scenario ever unfolded.

However, in the real world no such treatment is meted out by the nation's media when such an incident actually did take place.

WHY?

Well that's easy. For goodness sake,these poor chaps and chapesses are part of the so called cuddly loveable Tartan Army, so it couldn't have been them who were in the wrong. Could it?

It wisnae me mister. A big boy did it and ran away. The mantra of the guilty in Scotland since I was a wean.

Except the facts, as reported in the two top selling tabloids,seem suggest the opposite as far as the plane-load of the Tartan Army, en route to Prague from Liverpool, via Amsterdam are concerned.

And the pictures of them seem to suggest they are a similar motley looking crew to the many Scotland supporters I have been forced to share an airport and a flight with over the years.

It seems that easyjet - my second favourite airline - refused to allow them to board their flight from Amsterdam to Prague because they were adjudged to be too drunk to fly.

Some of the dregs I've seen on KLM flights - my all time favourite airline - were often too blootered to walk.

Therefore ,when I read the story of the Tartan Army ban on flying by easyjet I was hardly surprised. The only surprise is it has taken so long for an airline to take a tough stand.

Of course the denials of any wrong doing spewed from this ragtag bunch of warbling Jacobite wannabees.

Take the quote from 26-year-old Adam Armstrong, a retail manager from Dumfries, who denied anyone was worse of the wear from too much bevvy.

This guy said: "We've all had a beer, but no one is drunk. It's ridiculous. We've been turfed out onto the streets of Amsterdam."

I do hope if they took the train from Schipol into Amsterdam they found some entertainments adjacent to the station. I believe there are a variety only a lurch away. Whether the males among the bedraggled group were in any condition to avail themselves of any of the pleasures, is another matter.

But let's return to Adam Armstrong's claim that all the travellers had had was "a beer."

This is a group of the Tartan Army which had assembled at the John Lennon Airport in Liverpool in good time to check in for the flight to Amsterdam, which takes around an hour a half on a flight where alcohol is available.

A group of the Tartan Army which had around two hours between flights in Amsterdam, but who then found they were there even longer as the   easyjet   flight to Prague had been delayed for two and a half hours.

And during all that time - in and around the bars of the John Lennon airport, on the flight over to Amsterdam, and in the four hours or more they were hanging around Schipol, which is overflowing with bars - all they had was, to quote Adam Armstrong, "a beer."

AYE, RIGHT!

Now, as I have stated, I've been in many airports and on many flights to all corners of Europe with the Tartan Army. It is not a pleasant experience .

I've also shared many a KLM flight from Glasgow to Amsterdam and then onbound to every corner of Europe with Rangers supporters and Celtic fans.

Give me the Bigot Brothers anytime. And that ain't   just my view. Take a secret canvas of the press pack and they will tell you the same. They would rather share a city with Old Firm fans than with the Tartan Army.

Wee Silly Billy no doubt disagrees as, as I have already mentioned, he likes what passes for him as a good night out in a foreign port, with them, joining in with their anti-English choruses.

Let me give you an example of the way travelling to, for instance, Milan or Oslo, for a Scotland game on KLM works.

You turn up at Glasgow airport at 4.30am, bleary eyed ,   and   check in for the 5.55 to Amsterdam and are joined by half a dozen or so kilties. And do these guys never learn of the problems getting through security when they are dressed like that?

The flight is quiet - it's early and the many businessmen on it just want to do some work - apart from the loud, and often lewd comments from the Tartan Army.

Fortunately - thanks to my KLM Gold Card as a frequent flier - I was always able to escape them as I waited in the KLM lounge at Schipol.

On emerging and making my way to the gate I would always find the half dozen or so who had been on the Glasgow flight were joined by three or four dozen who came off flights from Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Manchester and London.

They were all done up in the usual Tartan Army uniform of a kilt at the wrong length, boots or trainers, and they were all cluttered around a bar giving it laldy. In short, they were a drunken rabble.

On the plane there were many occasions when I was ashamed to be Scottish as they made more than merely suggestive comments to the cabin crew. Thank goodness that these Dutch lasses, even though they all speak impeccable English, could not understand the gutteral slang of the Kens.

I had to strain myself to understand what some of these boozed up halfwits were saying. And I never, never, never ever spoke, lest any of them should recognise me as a Scot.

Let me tell you a story of a flight back from Oslo one morning.

I had managed to buy a copy of that morning's English edition of the Daily Mail and was sitting on a aisle seat, as is my custom . At the window was a guy who had that hard to put your finger on look of a Scot. He was smartly dressed in a polo shirt and chinos.

In the middle was typical Ken. Kilt, boots, rolled down socks and a Scotland top which smelled as though he had been wearing it night and day since he left Her Majesty's Realm.

He tried to strike up a conversation with me in what was nearer to being a foreign tongue than English. I shrugged and continued reading  the   Daily Mail. The Ken then turned to the window seat passanger and said:"Ken, he disnae speak English."

Now this twenty something Tartan Army Ken was not drunk. Stupid, but not drunk.

With all of that experience - up close and personal - travelling on flights and through airports with the Tartan Army, I have no doubt those who refused them permission to board the easyjet flight from Amsterdam to Prague, were quite correct.

So far, although the top two tabloids carried  the story,there is a hint in the style of their reports that this was just a jolly jape.

The High Jinks, as Para Handy says.

My bet though is that if other football supporters from Scotland had behaved in a similar way and been dealt with in such a manner, the style of the tabloid coverage would have been much harsher.

Imagine!

LEVEIN'S CONFUSION

2010-10-07T16:35:00.000+01:00

CRAIG LEVEIN gives the distinct impression he has never heard the old saying about sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander.

Certainly ,what holds good for one newspaper when it comes to getting an exclusive via a leak from the Scotland dressing room, does not appear to hold good for another, when it produces its own scoop via a leak.

Regular readers will recall my praise for the Daily Record's, Keith Jackson when he broke the story of Levein's outburst and verbal assualt on James McFadden at half time in last month's game against Liechtenstein.

Jacko's story also included the claim that Levein's rant was not only directed at the Birmingham City man, but also at Middlesbrough's Kris Boyd. It was a cracking tale, as I said at the time.

My observations about the wider reaching implications were directed at what I thought may be Levein's reaction to what had gone on within the sanctity of the dressing room being made public on the back page of the Record.

Surely, the question I posed, McFadden's own manager, former Scotland boss, AleX McLeish, and Boyd's boss at Boro, Gordon Strachan, would be less than impressed? They would have expected anything Levein may have had to say to their players behind closed doors, to remain there.

Of course, that's nothing to do with Jacko. His job is to get stories for the Record, regardless of whether they make Levein's job harder.

I did though expect to see the Scotland manager appearing in public print either issuing a denial, which would would have been difficult as everyone in the inky trade knew Jacko's exclusive was spot on, or at least issuing some sort of of statement.

From Levein though, words were there none. His silence on the subject was, and has remained, deafening.

Something else which I expected, was to hear through the grapvine which extends from the West Midlands and the north east, all the way back to Scotland, that Levein had been in touch privately with either big Eck or wee Gordy to explain himself.

Either that grapevine is clogged or there is nothing to report. And I know which of those alternatives I chose to believe is the case.

Sauce for the goose then. And for the gander?

Well, on Wednesday morning another press pack pal, the always meticulous and ever affable Roger Hannah, produced a stunning Scotland exclusive, via another leak.

It was, that Levein was planning to drop Rangers striker Kenny Millar, 49 caps, and the in form Scot in the top flight scoring stakes, from the team to face the Czech Republic in Prague ,and replace him with the uncapped Jamie Mackie from Queens Park Rangers in the Championship.

This led to a furious outburst from Levein when the squad and the press met up at Glasgow airport later on Wednesday, ready to depart for Prague.

According to Levein, Hannah and the Sun were traitors. The Scotland manager then ranted that he believed there were some members of the media who did not want Scotland to qualify for the European Championship Finals in Poland and the Ukraine in the summer of 2012.

Now please take a moment here. Think about that allegation.

What Levein was actually charging the Sun man with was not wanting to spend three weeks all on expenses jaunting around Poland and the Ukraine, staying in top hotels and watching football at the highest level.

And the charge he levelled against the Sun was that the newspaper did not wish the potential boost to its circulation for around a month which would be a product of Scotland's participation in the Euro 12 Finals.

Nurse! The screens please.

My view is that Roger Hannah and his sports editor, the highly experienced and extremely well connected Ian King, would never have run the story unless they were sure of their information.

Which is not to say that Miller won't start the game. Levein will have the final say on who does and does not play, and he can decide to change his mind should he wish to.

But as for the sauce for the gander? Not from Levein.

By the eve of the match he was cutting short the time he gave the travelling press pack in Prague as they sought to preview Friday night's match, and my information is that he felt unwilling to be a part of a circulation war between the Daily Record and the Sun.

Well here's a wee bit of historical newspaper information for Levein. Every Scotland team manager, every Old Firm manager, and indeed every manager in Scotland and all the clubs in Scotland are part of that war. Just as they have been, back to when it first started when Jock Stein was the national team boss.

And there were many before him who were part of a previous cut throat circulation war between the Scottish Daily Express and the Daily Record in the 1960s and 70s.

So here is another saying Levein gives little indication of knowing - one man's meat is another man's poison.

I certainly hope, whoever Levein picks, that Scotland win in Prague. And win they must, after blowing the chance of three points in Lithuania in a dreadful goalless draw.

There is every indication the Czechs are there for the taking, despite some of Levein's tame press pals talking them up.

It's a long time - ten years in fact - since the Czechs were rated number two in the world, boasting a golden generation of stars who played for some of Europe's top teams. Now they have slumped to 37th in the FIFA rankings, with only Tomas Rosicky of Arsenal and Chelsea keeper Petr Cech remaining.

They lost 1-0 at home to a Lithuanian side we could all see was no more than slightly below average, and in Michal Bilek have a coach who is the fourth to hold the position in just over the two years since the legendary Karel Buckner quit in the wake of a 2-0 lead over Turkey in the last Euro Finals being squandered in the closing 15 minutes, and a 3-2 defeat heralding their exit.

The Czechs have defensive worries and Bilek, like Levein a rookie at international level ,tried without any success to tempt Atletico Madrid's Tomas Ujfalus and Marek Jankuovski of AC Milan back to their country's colours.

On the face of it, therefore, the Czech Republic are a national team in turmoil. Which is a wee bit how the Scots have continued to look as the George Burley years have given way to the Levein era.

JELAVIC'S INJURY

2010-10-06T11:23:00.000+01:00

DO YOU remember when Kyle Lafferty cheated against Aberdeen to get Charlie Mulgrew sent off? And do you remember too, the number of times the incident was replayed on television?

Can you also remember when Lafferty was sent off against Hibernian this season, and the amazing amount of airtime on television this incident was given ?

Then, can you remember when Kevin Thomson was sent off against Hearts at Tynecastle last season, and the number of times his silly sideways lunge was repeated on the box?

Now hit the fast forward button and let's return to Tynecastle and highlight the moment when a terrible tackle from behind - outlawed by FIFA - by Ian Black on Nikica Jelavic, injured the striker so badly he had to fly home for surgery and is not expected to play again for anything up to four months.

But where have all the television replays been of the tackle from a match shown live on ESPN?

That's a tricky one, for it has been hard to catch up with them, as on Monday and Tuesday night's Reporting Scotland - the licence fee funded national broadcaster - it appears we are in the midst of some old fashioned height of the Cold War Kremlin-style cover up.

And as far as that modern phenomenon, which has fast become an old reliable, YouTube? Well, anyone trying to find the Black tackle which crippled Jelavic there will draw a blank, and be met with the message....

"The clip of the Black tackle on Jelavic has been removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim by the Scottish Premier League."

That will be the same Scottish Premier League who have ensured Rangers must face five away matches on the weekends following their six Champions League ties.

Does anyone detect a pattern here?

Rangers player sins, his sin is missed by the referee, but caught on camera and his sin is shown over and over and over, again and again and again.

Or, Rangers player sins, is caught by the referee and punished by him with a red card, and the sin, again caught on camera, is repeated on television over and over and over, again and again and again.

As opposed to Rangers player is the victim of a bad tackle - one which many believe merited a red card ,but which was dealt with by a yellow - and is badly injured. And the result???

Blank screens!

People are therefore robbed of their right as licence payers to see the clip again and again and again, over and over and over on BBC Scotland's Reporting Scotland at the peak tea time viewing hour, in order that they can form their own judgement.

Rangers supporters though must be indebted to Keith Jackson of the Daily Record and Scott Burns of the Scottish Daily Express, for their interviews with Jelavic.

It's taken Black long enough to issue a public apology claiming it was an accident, and that the Rangers man was too quick for him.

But Jelavic, as quoted in the Record and Express, is having none of it.

If the public were given the opportuinity by the BBC, the state funded broadcaster, to view the incident from all the angles - as was the case when Lafferty and Thomson sinned - then a judgement could be formed on whether Black was unlucky, and Jelavic even more unlucky.

Or not!

That would be justice. For Black, and for Jelavic. For, as I have often stated, for justice to be done, it must be seen to be done.

One reporter, who has the inside track at Ibrox, says that senior Rangers sources are seething with anger. The speculation is one senior source is Walter Smith.

He spent over £4m of the meagre transfer budget afforded him by the club's Lloyds Bank paymasters on Jelavic, and the striker was showing every sign of forming an intelligent and lethal partnership with Kenny Miller.

There was also - in a sort of perverse way - the bonus of the fact he is ineligble for Europe, meaning Rangers were hoping to look to Jelavic as an injection of fresh legs to the team for the next four away matches they have been ordered by the SPL to play immediately after Champions League ties.

His loss in the Champions League - a tournament Rangers cannot possibly hope to win - was therefore balanced by the rest he would have ahead of SPL games, as the champions bid to retain their domestic crown.

That benefit would have been seen next when the first Old Firm game of the season takes place at Parkhead a few days after Rangers must face the team settling Spain alight right now, Valencia.

Now Jelavic - as a result of the injury he suffered following the tackle by Black, - will not only miss that match, but may still be sidelined when Celtic visit Ibrox on January 2.

His injury may turn out to be a Marco Negri moment for Rangers.

Whether that proves to be the case or not, in the interest of justice - for Black as well as Jelavice for it would give the Hearts man a chance to prove his claim of his lack of malice - the incident in which the Rangers man is the injured party should be given the same television prominence as those occasions when it has been the Rangers player who has been the sinner.

Over and over and over, again and again and again.

MANUS JOSEPH J FULLERTON

2010-10-04T12:37:00.000+01:00

BACK in September 2000 the Herald reported on the formation of, and the first Annual General Meeting of the Celtic Supporters Trust.

Among the well known names who became the founding trustees was Glasgow's Lord Provost, Alex Mosson, along with then trade union official Jim Devine. To find the full list the link is....

tcweb.co.uk/jim/listings/8.html

On it you will find that the list of people said to be sitting on the Celtic Supporters Trust board of trustees for 2000-01, includes the name of Manus Fullerton, together with a small biography which reads.....

"Born in London Road, half a mile from Parkhead, as a toddler I have vague recollections of watching Charlie Tully and am married with two kids, the older of the two, Josie, is Celtic mad and accompanies me to home games. John(1) is also Celtic mad, but doesn't realise it yet. I work in banking and I am responsibly(sic) for all the bank's activity with businesses in Scotland. I am very interested in the aims of the Trust and the need for supporters and small shareholders to have their views heard at the appropriate level in Celtic plc. With over 30 years experience in banking I hope to be able to use this to make a valuable contribution to the work of the Trust!"

Ah, a banker! But with which bank? And at how high a level.

The trail led to Who's Who in Scotland and the entry in the 2009 edition for one Manus Joseph J Fullerton, described as being the director of wholesale banking at Lloyds, which the British taxpayer now owns 41 per cent of . Lloyds are also, of course, Rangers bankers.

His entry reveals his date of birth as being 11-4-1949 and adds that he has held his post since 1999. Recreations are given as painting, reading and football, and his email address, freely available to anyone who looks him up in Who's Who in Scotland is manus.fullerton@lloydsdtsb.co.uk

The Scottish Banker magazine of June/July 2004 carried a lifestyle feature on him in which he talks at length of his love of painting. No mention is made of his other declared interests, football, or what team he supports, or what books he reads.

Whether or not this is the same Manus Joseph J Fullerton who is listed as a Celtic Supporters Trust trustee - which has no official status within Celtic plc - is a matter for debate. But it is not a common name.

In July 2008 he pops up on the BBC News Channel site, and is quoted as saying: "I am responsible for all of the bank's activity with businesses in Scotland."

The banker is certainly an influential figure within the Scottish establishment and is listed on a Scottish government website as having been appointed, in December 2009 for a period of three years, to VisitScotland, with renumeration of £8,235-per-year for two days' work per month.

He also sits on the board and is an advisor to Reactec Ltd, is a member of the board of Social Investment Scotland, is a member of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, and is an exectutive board member past of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland.

And, as is the case with so many of today's movers and shakers, there is also a Manus Fullerton to be found, and pictured, on the social networking site, Facebook. - facebook.com/people/manusfullerton/180047559

To give a further flavour of the high echelons of the establishment he moves among, Manus Fullerton is listed as having chaired a debate in March 2009 at the Scottish Parliament when the motion was "Would Independence Be Good For Business In Scotland?"

He is quoted on Waterstones.com , reviewing a book called "Confident Networking For Career Success And Satisfaction," by Stuart and Gael Lindenfield.

In that review he opines: " A major area for learning, for me, was on the section on enetworking."

Around that same period, as he reached his 60th birthday, the Herald reported he had delayed his retirement after being asked to stay on by Lloyds to help with the integration.

Later, in August 2009 he was pictured receiving an award at the National Business Awards and is described in a UKNet Guide interview with Patrick Hind as being the director of coporate and business banking at Lloyds.

He is also listed on the Red Orbit site Business diary as having been a guest in August 2005 at a dinner in the Easter Road, Suite, hosted by Scottish Power's HR director, Steve Dunn, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hibernian becoming the first Scottish club to play in the European Cup.

The Red Orbit site credits the Herald as its source and quotes an unamed guest as saying:"Hibs fans among us were having a right good laugh at Celtic's expense."

This would be around the time of Celtic's crushing defeat away to Artmedia, following them being pipped on the post on the last day of season 04-05, by Rangers, who took the title by winning at Easter Rd.

All of the above is merely information I have uncovered through research, and is freely available in back copies of newspapers and magazines, in reference books, and through internet deep search engines, and is in no way meant to imply anything untoward at all.

What it does do, is paint a picture of a man who is at the very heart of the Scottish establishment.

GUARDIAN'S GLENDENNING BRANDS RANGERS FC AS HUNS

2010-09-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

NOW I know there won't be many of you reading this who take the Guardian. Actually there are few folk anywhere who buy it.

However, its online presence and penetration is phenomenal. According to the website, Soccer Lens, it has 33 million readers. That's just slightly more than half the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Which makes it important that the Guardian.co.uk is as tightly policed as the ''hard''copy of the newspaper.

Something though, which the Guardian, on its pages and online, most certainly is, is the most politically correct daily publication in Britain, if not the world.

Not for a moment would anyone on the Guardian ever think of describing a disabled person as a "cripple." Quite right too. The Guardian's choice would no doubt be "differently abled." All minorities are treated with kid gloves.

Not so Rangers FC. Step forward Barry Glendenning, the deputy sports editor of Guardian.co.uk who, on Wednesday afternoon Twittered an obscenity about Rangers.

It seems he fancies himself as a bit of a tipster and the twit's Twitter message read: "Best bet of the day/month/year? Bursaspor to beat Rangers @ 3-1. The Huns Big Cup record is awful."

Now I remember when the folk who wrote sport for the Guardian were giants of the inky business. I often shared a press box down south with David Lacy, who was not only a fine writer and good judge, but an absolute gentleman.

Then there was a period in the early 1980s in the Midlands when the Guardian's man there, Charlie Burgess, and I became pals who shared many a balti in Birmingham's curry triangle after a midweek match. Big Charlie was wonderfully diffident, supremely talented and charming.

It is a tradition which is carried on to this day by Kevin McCarra, whose match report on the Manchester United-Rangers Champions League encounter was a model of balance and insight.

Glendenning clearly does not belong to that tradition. Perhaps the fact he lists being a stand-up comedian as one of his talents explains a great deal. Maybe he's better at being funny than he is as a tipster, for anyone wading in on Bursaspor at 3-1 would have lost their dough.

It is just the latest in a long line of the use of the offensive word, Huns. The last was in the Scotsman a mere fortnight ago, which led to a signed apology by editor John McLellan.

It will be interesting to see if the Guardian's celebrated editor, Alan Rusbridger also grovels. Though this time any apology should not be directed only at those who support Rangers, but at the club itself. For it was Rangers FC which was the target for Glendenning's slur.

It is a matter for anyone who read his twitter, who may wish to get in touch with the Guardian's editor to complain, or to contact the Press Complaints Commission.

The actual origin and true meaning of the word Hun was well researched and documented on a still available previous blog, should a recap be required.

It is hard to see what prompted such a disgraceful slur, with the use of a word which the Guardian approved anti sectarian organisation, Nil By Mouth, has long listed as a banned word.

As far as I can see, Glendenning has no ties with Scotland. In fact his background does not even appear to be British, as his previous employment on his biography says he worked for the Hot Press magazine in Ireland, and with the Irish Sunday Independent.

What makes his low insult more dangerous is the number of people who are exposed to his opinions. He is often found at the helm of Guardian Unlimited, which provides minute by minute reports and which features live coverage of Champions League games and internationals, and he also appears on Guardian Unlimited's football podcast, Football Weekly, hosted by well known television broadcaster, James Richardson.

And get this. In an interview on the Soccer Lens site, Glendenning says : "Some of the correspondence we get from fans is often astonishingly offensive."

So what the devil does he think comparing Rangers chairman, Alastair Johnston, chief executive, Martin Bain, manager Walter Smith, captain and Scotland's Player of the Year, Davie Weir, and all the others at Ibrox, with Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengle and the rest of the Nazis is?

Offensive does not even begin to describe it.

Now I know there are some Rangers supporters out there who believe it is all just banter. They should ponder on what might be the outcry if a newspaper was to refer to any other Scottish club and its supporters in a similarly derogatory way.

Aye, I thought so.

What, in my view, Glendenning's sordid slur showed is that so many press people and other media folk believe Rangers and their supporters are fair game. The fans and the Ibrox club can be insulted in a way they would never dream of in the case of any other organisation, institution or people from any other section of the population.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Glendenning is a bigot. And certainly shrink from branding him as being mentally crippled. Differently abled in the mental department though is a possibility.

BARRY FERGUSON - THE TRUTH

2010-09-28T15:02:00.000+01:00

NOT for the first, and probably not the last time, I am reminded of that graveyard for English comedians, the Glasgow Empire.

Once upon a time, Mike and Bernie Winters were playing it, and opened with the wee one alone on stage telling what he tried to pass off as jokes. There was silence in the hall.

Then, enter stage left, his goofy toothed and even less funny brother. At last the silence was broken as a good old fashioned Glasgow voice boomed from the gods...awe naw! There's two of them.

What brought the hoary old, though true, tale of the music halls to my mind, was an interview conducted by one of the best and most accomplished sportswriters on any of the so-called heavies, Alan Patullo of the Scotsman.

Sir Bruce, as he is known with great affection among the hack pack, was following up the interview Barry Ferguson gave on BBC Radio Scotland which was interpreted by many as an indication he wished to return to play for Scotland.

Two of the folk Patullo interviewed were Tam Ferry and Hamish Husband, described as Tartan Army spokesmen. My reaction was predictable.

AWE NAW! THERE'S TWO OF THEM.

It would appear one favoured Ferguson's return from international exile, while the other did not. Who was for, and who against, is unimportant.

However it did raise one question about the Tartan Army. Is it now split? And if so, which is the official wing and which the provisional?

That's a joke guys. Honest!

There are though more important questions to be asked about the whole sorry affair and the vilification which has come Ferguson's way since his announcement that, no, he did not wish to play for Scotland agan.

For a start, and despite clear and unabiguous comments to the contrary, there are those who seem to believe the final decision rested not with Ferguson, but with his manager at Birmingham City, Alex McLeish. This suggestion is absolute bunkum and balderdash and may even constitute a defamation of big Eck.

Something I am sure he and his m'learned friends are keeping a close eye on.

I missed the radio interview, but on reading its content felt that any story claiming what Ferguson said laid the groundwork for an international return, was grossly overstating the case.

One senior colleague said he initially agreed, but went on to say that when he took the time to actually listen to the broadcast, his feeling was the player wanted to don the dark blue again, and that I may review my view by listening to it.

Always willing to take advice from such a respected source, I got a pal to work the internet for me and tuned in. Ah, the wonders of this modern age.

However, my view remained unaltered, especially as I had spoken to someone who had talked to Ferguson and found the player saying he was bemused by all the fuss.

At this point arms and legs grew onto the story. Some said he would return, and others weren't so sure. I remained commited to a view formed in the summer, when a mutual friend visited Ferguson and told me he was veering to concentrating on his club.

It was a story which I wrote for one national Sunday newspaper in July, and which appeared around ten days before Ferguson's decision was announced.

Where BBC Television's Reporting Scotland got their statement that Ferguson had kept Scotland waiting for a decision since February, goodness only knows. An early Christmas cracker perhaps?

Frankly, I can well understand why Ferguson did not want to put himself in the firing line again, for even when he was at his best for Scotland - and that was pretty good - there were many in the Tartan Army who held him in low regard.

I even saw one newspaper this week refer to him as 'the crab' after his style. Actually I have never heard him called that, though I remember sitting in the manager's office at Old Trafford with Ron Atkinson, who told me that's what some fans called Ray Wilkins. And it wasn't meant as a compliment.

Ray Wilkins, for goodness sake. Even my noted tolerance is stretched by that sort of rubbish. Anyone who could not appreciate the way Wilkins and Ferguson's style was based on the first rule of the game, keeping possession, should never be allowed into watch football again.

Ferguson also very often put his future fitness on the line for Scotland. I recall sitting in a hotel in Iceland eight years ago as he spoke to Sunday newspaper reporters about his pelvic problems.

It was the day before a vital quailifer and he revealed how he had taken as many painful, but eventually pain killing injections, as was allowed. His graphic description of what this entailed - and where - brought a tear to a glass eye.

Therefore, in order to continue to rally to his country's colours, he was stuffing pain killers down his throat to such an extent that he had almost permanent stomach problems. That was what he was willing to go through to play for Scotland.

Yet, wherever I wherever I travelled to report on Rangers- with the noteable exception of Inverness - and despite the fact he was Scotland's captain, Ferguson was singled out for a particularly virulent form of abuse.

My memory stretches back to away games involving Celtic and Rangers at a time when Billy McNeill, Danny McGrain, Roy Aitken, Paul Lambert, Eric Caldow and John Greig were among the revered names who were captain of club and country, and I have no memory of them being on the receiving end of such taunts and hatred.

The comments attached to the many newspaper online versions of the story about Fergsuon's decision also reveal a hostility towards him by many members of the Tartan Army. It's a mystery to me.

Of course they will point to the Boozegate scandal and the player's antics at Hampden a few days later. What he did at Hampden was stupid, childish and indefensible.

As for the events at Cameron House on the return from a whipping in Holland. Well, the exact truth of the circumstances surrounding them has never been fully explained. So let me set the record straight on why the then manager George Burley should shoulder some of the blame.

When the squad arrived back in Glasgow, it was actually officially disbanded at the airport. Those who wished to go their own way were free to do so. The schedule was for the squad to re-assemble again at Cameron house at tea time on the Sunday evening.

The mistake Burley made was in adding that anyone who wanted to go straight to Cameron House could do so, and that food and drink would be provided. The mistake Fergie made was in chosing that option.

Had he headed home, or into town to any of the places where he would have been made welcome and been able to relax away from prying eyes, nobody would have been any the wiser.

Who knows what those members of the disbanded squad may or may not have got up to when they headed in whatever direction they chose.

The fact remains though, that Ferguson broke no rules and defied no curfew. That was never properly explained at the time. Instead, the media feeding frenzy broke, with Ferguson torn apart.

What is also not known is Walter Smith's reaction to the original outcry. My information is that he was far from happy with the then Rangers captain being thrown to the wolves, but, with Scotland involved in another match, sagely kept his counsel.

Whatever he may or may not have planned to say to Ferguson, and publicly comment, when his captain returned to Murray Park on the Friday, became irrelevant due to what the player did at Hampden on the Wednesday. The ground had been cut from under Smith's feet and he was rightly furious.

The Ibrox captaincy was stripped from Ferguson and he was told he would never again play for Rangers. Smith later softened and Ferguson returned as Rangers won the title, but at the end of the season he left for Birmingham.

It is a measure of his dedication to his country and his professionalism, that Ferguson played for the national team under Craig Brown, Berti Vogts, Walter Smith and Alex McLeish without any hint of scandal or problem.

It is a measure of the Tartan Army's appreciation of football, that so many of them never wanted him in the Scotland team, even when when he was at the peak of his game, and captaining club and country.

And when it comes to those two Tartan Army spokesmen. Well, let's just say that if the Glasgow Empire was still on the go they'd get a lot more laughs than Mike and Bernie Winters did.

SPL BOSSES STUFF RANGERS AGAIN

2010-09-24T20:42:00.000+01:00

THE names at the top of the Scottish Premier League may have changed, but one thing which remains a constant is the way Rangers are treated by this organisation.

Lex ''Two Carat'' Gold is no longer the SPL executive chairman and Ian Blair is no longer the head honcho's right hand man.

However, the new top man, executive chairman, Ralph Topping and his sidekick, chief executive, Neil Doncaster, don't seem any more capable of providing a level playing field for their champions than their predecessors were.

Witness the hand the SPL have dealt Rangers when the fixtures were put together. I hesitate to say they were planned, for if they were then more serious accusations may have been bandied about.

Though there be some people out there who choose to take a hard line.

I could never go along with any conspiracy theory regarding what Rangers must face in the period between now and the first week in December when the Champions League group schedule ends. The facts though, speak for themselves.

This weekend has Rangers making the trip to to the north east to face Aberdeen before they entertain Bursaspor in the Champions League on Wednesday, followed by a noon kick off on Saturday, away to Hearts at Tynecastle, always one of the toughest trips for the Old Firm.

And so it goes on. Before Valencia arrive in Glasgow for the match on Wednesday 20 October, Rangers are away to Motherwell, and after the Valencia encounter they must travel across the city to Parkhead for the first Old Firm game of the season.

They prepare for the visit of Manchester United with a journey to Ayrshire and a match against Kilmarnock, and follow the meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson's team by being sent to another of the toughest of away grounds, Tannadice and an SPL meeting with Dundee United.

It almost beggars belief. But no, it's true. That isn't the end of it either. At least Rangers are home before their long and difficult journey to Turkey, and the very outer edge of Europe for a clash with Bursaspor which could well decide whether they make it through to the last 16 of the Champions League, or qualify for the Europa Cup.

However, when the weary travellers arrive back in Scotland, just guess what faces them? That's correct, another away game. Not just any old journey either, but the longest one possible as they hit the trail to the Highland capital and a match against Inverness Caley.

This is just the latest in a long line of what many people see as an SPL bias against Rangers.

For instance, for seven of the last ten seasons Rangers have been forced to visit a club for a third match after the split, something which incurred the wrath of Walter Smith towards the end of last season.

Smith said at the time that Rangers would be writing to the SPL to request that someone explain it all, and when some Sunday reporters asked the question of SPL officials they were, according to one colleague, subjected to such a mind boggling barrage of mumbo jumbo that they were completely confused.

That does not surprise me as I recall one telephone conversation I had with Ian Blair when his management-speak was so bewildering and lacking in clarity I thought I had dialled David Brent at The Office.

Blair it seems, is no longer in such a powerful position, and if true that is a good thing, while the departure of Gold - a man whose stewardship as chairman of Hibs co-incided with a terrible time for that club - appeared to be good news too, as did the arrival of Doncaster.

But the fixtures foisted on Rangers around their Champions League dates by the SPL makes me resort to that old line about only the names having been changed.

To quote from the official website of another Glasgow club - surely no fair minded man etc etc..........

Now this old observer is not suggesting Rangers should have been handed six easy home matches on the weekends after their midweek European adventures.

However, just a single solitary home match to follow European weeks is just not even handed. It does not present a level playing field.

If, at the end of the season, Rangers lose the title, and they look back on points dropped on away trips in the aftermath of Champions League action, there will be more rancour.

And, if they have to make a difficult third trip to a tough venue for the eighth time in eleven seasons after the split, then any complaints they may make will surely be justified.

Topping and Doncaster are at the moment engaged on a charm offensive, having taken a squad of daily newspapers out for a curry last week, with a gaggle of the Sundays due for a feed from them soon.

It seems they are trying to pave the way for a favourable press for plans for reconstruction they are believed to be on the brink of making public, with a 14-team SPL thought to be the favoured option.

Just how many away games they may wish to force Rangers to play in any new-look SPL is anybody's guess.

THE REAL NEIL LENNON

2010-09-23T11:50:00.000+01:00

ONE of the reasons why I find Neil Lennon such an engaging character is how his flashes of honesty can wrong-foot you.

One such occasion was when I gave him an ''out'' when interviewing him in Denmark after he had played in an already qualified Celtic side, beaten 3-1 by FC Copenhagen in a Champions League dead rubber.

Lennon was having none of my suggestion that it was hard for a team to peak when the job had already been done. Instead he was brutally honest in the way he was critical of the team's performance on that cold wet December night in 2006.

Now, cast your mind back to just over three years before that, to May 2003, and the bitter twisted view taken by Chris Sutton when he unleashed what many believed was a libellous rant the day Rangers beat Dunfermline 6-1 at Ibrox, while Celtic could only win 4-0 at Kilmarnock - missing a penalty.

Those results, on Helicopter Sunday Mark One, meant Rangers won the SPL Championship - the 50th time the Ibrox club had been crowned kings of Scottish football.

Sutton's remarks, live on television, and for which he never apologised personally and without reservation, were to the effect that Dunfermline had lain down to Rangers.

The Fife club's manager, Jimmy Calderwood, board and players were advised of their right to recourse to m'learned friends, but chose not to.

What also emerged at the time was a propoganda deluge, claiming Rangers only won the title because Celtic had been distracted by their run to Seville and their losing appearance in the UEFA Cup Final.

Such was the extent of this non-stop barrage in newspapers and on the airwaves, those with Celtic DNA tried to make everyone believe Celtic winning nothing was preferable to Rangers not only taking the title, but making it a clean sweep of honours, for a seventh Treble.

Somehow it even managed to plant some sort of seed in the mind of Rangers manager, Alex McLeish, who later cited Celtic's European involvement as being a factor in the title ending at Ibrox.

Now fast forward to Lennon's press conference with Sunday newspapers on the Friday before the first week of this season's Champions League campaign.

The Celtic manager was asked about how Celtic's absence from European football would impact , and perhaps boost, his team's SPL chances, with the reporter who asked the question reminding Lennon of what McLeish had said.

However, Lennon, with a flash of that honesty which helps make me find him so engaging, not only shot this down, but became the first person associated with Celtic to give Rangers their long overdue due for winning the 2003 Championship.

Big Eck, as Lennon referred to him, had been wrong to belittle his own team's achievment by citing Seville, and, also according to the Parkhead manager, it was quite an achievement, given the calibre of the Celtic team McLeish's men pipped at the post.

A week later and Lennon again refused to duck a contentious issue when confronted by daily hacks interviewing him on his 100th day as Celtic manager.

The elephant in the room during each of those days had been Lennon's admission in his own book, that he suffers from depression.

One cowardly Silly Billy of a so-called reporter had tried to be a smart arse in the way he alluded to it when he wrote about Lennon's state of mind in the wake of Celtic's Euro exit. I felt incensed at this shabby treatment.

The Daily Record's Hugh Keevins, though, is no coward. Hughie is always up front and never afraid to step into the firing line to ask the difficult questions. And they don't come any more awkward than asking a man to discuss his mental health in front of the nation's media.

Lennon, wrong-footed everyone by neither brushing the politely framed question aside, or growling at the questioner. Instead he took the opportunity to confront the elephant in the room and remove its tusks.

Lennon spoke of everyone having some cross to bear, and this was his, and went on to say that since becoming Celtic manager he had not had time to feel depressed.

It was a bravura performance by Lennon and Keevins, and did much to enhance the reputation of both in their fields, unlike the view taken by many of the Silly Billy and his sneaky sniping.

Of course Lennon isn't everyone's cup of tea, and during his award winning seasons at the heart of the Celtic midfield for Martin O'Neill and Gordon Strachan there were many of a Parkhead persusion who questioned his contribution.

The same people are now less than happy with his appointment as manager.Though, as many of these folk also did not like Strachan, because of his lack of a Celtic background, despite his three-in-a-row achievment , it may be safe to say you cannot please some of the people any of the time.

It is easier to see why Lennon's reputation is lower across the city with those who follow Rangers, with many of them citing an alleged rant at them during an Old Firm clash at Ibrox.

Certainly Lennon has behaved with less than dignity during some high tension head-to-heads with the team he loves to best the most. But that's in the heat of battle.

Away from it he is different, and there was even the infamous occasion when O'Neill grabbed him round the neck after Rangers had won at Ibrox, and led him on a walk of defiance to the Celtic supporters, when Lennon looked both bemused an uncomfortable.

No doubt there will be other times when he does himself less than justice when the battle fever is on him.

However, none of that can take away from what I have found to be his honesty, and for being the first man from Celtic to admit that Alex McLeish's Rangers deserved to win the SPL Championship in May 2003.

THE REAL HUNS

2010-09-20T13:28:00.000+01:00

THERE is a marvellous part of Paul Brickhill's wonderful biography of Sir Douglas Bader, 'Reach For The Sky,' which recalls when the Battle of Britain fighter pilot hero is being questioned by a German officer.

It is just after Bader became a POW, and the German adopts a softy-softy approach, saying to Bader that he knows the British always call them, Jerries.

Bader, always pugnacious, quickly interjects and corrects his interrogator by saying: "No we don't. We call you Huns."

Which gives a perfect example of just who or what Huns historically are. There is a long history behind this term, and those who bandy it about as a jibe at Rangers and their supporters are clearly ingnorant of that history.

In the ranks of the ignorant I include the editor of the Scotsman, John McLennan . His newspaper was deluged by complaints after a cartoon appeared featuring the German Pope waving to Rangers fans in the aftermath of the draw at Old Trafford, and remarking that it was a good day all round for Huns.

McLennan was so under siege he took a step unusual for an editor-in-chief of publishing a signed apology. It was however, weasel-worded, as he admitted to being a Rangers fan, brought up in the West of Scotland who was frequently referred to as a Hun by his Celtic supporting friends, and insisted he took no offence from it.

WELL HE SHOULD!

And indeed he would if he knew the history of the word in the 20th century. What will surprise all but the most erudite of readers, is that it was first used in July 1900 by Kaiser Wilhelm 111 as he spoke to German troops being sent to China to put down the Boxer Rebellion.

What Kaiser Bill said was this: "Prisoners will not be taken. Once, a thousand years ago the Huns, under their king, Attila, made a name for themselves, one still potent in legend and tradition. May you in this way make the name of Germany remembered for a thousand years, so that no Chinaman will ever again dare to even squint at a German."

There followed a period of German barbarism when the Germans, taking the Kaiser at his word, perpetrated the first genocide of the 20th century, as a forerunner to the Holocaust.

It was during 1904 in German south west Africa - what we know today as Nambia - that General Lothar von Trotha slaughtered 60,000 of the Herero tribe and 8,000, from a population of 10,000, of the Nama tribe.

This led to the Germans becoming widely known as Huns, an epithet which gained even more of a common currency ten years later at the outbreak of the Great War.

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany perfected the barbaric techniques of mass extermination, putting six million Jews to death, plus uncounted millions of Romany people, Slavs, and even their own countrymen, should they be unfortunate enough to suffer any mental illness, or be homosexual.

Huns, in the tradition of Attila, indeed, but to an extent the Mongolian warlord could never have imagined.

It was a word still used into the mid 1970s when that fine and learned Scot, Jeremy Issacs, produced the definitive television history of the 1939-45 fight for the survival of civilisation against the Huns, The World At War.

Many of those interviewed, in a series which is often re-run on the History , Yesterday or Discovery channels, refer to those from Nazi Germany as Huns, just as Bader did when confronted with one.

Therefore those who use it to describe Rangers and the club's supporters are either extremely ignorant, or believe the Ibrox club and its supporters can be compared to the SS, the Gestapo and all the others who were responsible for genocide.

Brian Reade of the Daily Mirror is another who is either a fool or a bigot after he tried to be a smart alec by using it, referring to Rangers , in a recent column in that once great but now laughable rag.

One man who would not tolerate it being used was the wee guy who I thought was one of the best things ever to happen to Scottish football, the fellow who rescued Celtic from oblivion, the wonderful Fergus McCann.

I always thought Celtic as a club were at their best and most admirable when McCann was calling the shots and a good pal of mine, Jim Cullen, a Celtic supporter who owned The Montrose Bar, where I often shared a shandy with Billy McNeill and other Parkhead legends, idolised wee Fergus.

Of course there may be many with Celtic DNA who disagree. Who think McCann was not as great a Celt as I and my pal big Jim believed.

However, I am sure there are others, like so many of the Celtic supporters who have been my friends down through the years, and who may not have been completely aware of just what the history of the epithet, Huns is.

They know now!

Though I am just as sure there are others who won't take a blind bit of notice of this wee lesson to let them know the history, and will continue to apply the the insult, Huns to Rangers and the club's fans.

Fergus McCann had his own insult for those people. He called them bigots.

MAGIC IN MANCHESTER

2010-09-16T20:43:00.000+01:00

IT was on the morning of the Champions League tie at Old Trafford that the Daily Mail's English edition carried a story which had the travelling Scottish press pack hooting with laughter.

Michael Walker, began his preview on how he thought Rangers would approach the task of facing Manchester United, in swaggering style.

He wrote -" NO SURRENDER! For Rangers supporters that has always been the cry and that siege mentality has slipped like a glove on to the teams Walter Smith sent out in away games in Europe for the past two seasons."

Twenty four hours later and those same sports pages of the Daily Mail were spewing bile from the laptop of big baw faced Martin Samuel.

Fast forward another day and Samuel's opinion was completely discredited as he described Braga, thumped 6-0 by Arsenal, as adopting the same five across midfield formation that Rangers had against United. So he either can't count, knows nothing about football, or maybe even both.

However, not all of his southern colleagues were so rampantly insular, though what the inky business calls the colour piece, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph beside the byline of Kevin Garside, was partricularly obnoxious.

The Telegraph's number one football man, Henry Winter - my particular favourite in England - was much more measured and gave Rangers and Walter Smith their due, as did the Guardian's Kevin McCarra, an old buddy of mine from his days on Scotland on Sunday.

Kevin made the point that Rangers were not the first team to try a blanket defence against Manchester United, but they did it better and more successfuly than any of the others.

Of course the fact Sir Alex Ferguson changed his team from the one which threw away a two goal lead in the last minutes away to Everton, seemed to surprise many, and has even led to fevered calls from some supporters of another club - one which is not taking part in any European competition - for UEFA to take action against Manchester United for fielding what they call a weakened team.

It's unlikely UEFA will give house room to the deranged rantings of these poor deluded fools, but if they did, what would be an appropriate sanction against United? All three points being given to Rangers? As I said, the deranged rantings of deluded fools.

And a weakened team? The side Ferguson chose contained players with a total on 393 international caps, included the England captain, the Scotland captain, England's Player of the Year, an £11m centre half and a £16m winger.

Oh, and when that winger, Valencia, was so tragically carried off, his replacement was a man who for me, is one of the three best and most consistent players in England over the last 15 years, Ryan Giggs.

What in fact happened was that Fergie was outfoxed by the old silver fox of Scottish football, Smith. At the official UEFA pre match press confereence on Monday, Ferguson praised the Rangers manager as an astute tactical thinker, adding that he could hear Smith's brain whirring as it strove to come up with a plan to thwart him.

Smith did all of that, and by keeping his plan under wraps until the very last minute - not even telling the team until just before they were due to leave their hotel on Tuesday - he ensured no talkative stooge could blab to the tabloids.

Aye, you've got to be up early to put one over on Smith.

There were other nuggets to be gleaned from being in Manchester, especially in the Europa Suite the day before the game, watching Smith and Ferguson perform in such different styles on the podium.

One pearl which dropped from Ferguson was when he told of his shock at the way Lloyds Bank were dealing with Rangers after Smith had told him how small the club's debt to those bankers really is.

Of course he didn't come right out and say it, but there was a sense that Ferguson, a man whose intimate relationship with the Labour Party's powerbrokers has given him an extra insight into what motivates people, and how they go about damaging others, may even have been pondering on Lloyds' motivation.

It's something this blog has pointed out before, and will do again. Investigations on Lloyds personel are ongoing, and when the trail I am now following ends, all will be revealed.

Whether or not the nation's newspapers will be brave enough and professional enough to follow up on any revelation remains to be seen.

But back to what Rangers achieved for Scottish football out on the turf at that magical Old Trafford arena.

Those of us of a certain vintage were reminded how we gazed with awe on how Italian sides could come to this country and be battered, but who could marshal a defensive tactic, the Catenaccio - the Bolt - to bar the way of so many of Scotland's greats.

What Smith and Rangers did in Manchester was to adopt that professional approach with such success that keeper Allan McGregor did not have to make one noteable save.

Compare that to the performance of Andy Goram at Elland Road to keep Leeds United at bay in 1992, and compare the standard of players available to Smith in Yorkshire to those he could call on in Lancashire.

That was the measure of what happened on a night when it was United who looked like those Scottish sides of yore and Rangers who took on the mantle of the polished and so tactically sopisticated old Italian masters.

The Daily Mail's sports writer, Michael Walker was indeed prophetic when his penned "NO SURRENDER" introduction appeared in the Daily Mail, Britain's second biggest selling daily newspaper on the morning of a match which will now find a place in the history of Rangers.

SCOTLAND'S PRIDE

2010-09-12T18:37:00.000+01:00

THERE are times when I am immensely proud to be a Scot, and this is one such time.

Of course, there are other occasions when some of my countrymen - the Jacobites of the Tartan Army for instance - make me lower my voice, lest people recognise my guid Scots tongue.

This week though I will be talking with the volume at full blast, and I will be puffing out my chest with pride for my wee country.

Pride at the openness and tolerance of a nation which is throwing open its doors and rolling out the red carpet to welcome the leader of no more than 18per cent of Scotland 5.1million population.

A tiny minority of a sect, ruled over by a foreign price from a foreign land, who is chosen in secret, according to ancient ceremony.

It says a great deal about Scotland, and how tolerant of others and their foreign mores we truly international Scots are. A Man's A Man For A' That, at its very best.

And the welcome being laid on surely knocks into a cocked hat Jack McConnell's stupid claim about sectarianism and bigotry being Scotland's secret shame.

No wonder wee Jack achieved what many thought was the impossible when he actually managed to lose an election for Labour in Scotland.

Scotland's welcome for the leader of one of the country's minorities, also shames the irrational rantings of that wee music maker, James McMillan.

Though, compared to, for instance, George Gershwin, McMillan isn't even second rate. Listen to Rhapsody In Blue or Porgy and Bess, lyrics by brother, Ira and you'll see what I mean.

Of course it could well be McMillan relishes - and perhaps even needs - the publicity he gets when he spouts his nonsense to a tame media.

So, at a time when the nation is having to tighten its belt, I welcome this week's visit, even though, at a conservative estimate it will cost the taxpayer £20M - not including the policing and other security costs.

As a guideline to these, the security at the G8 Conference held at Gleneagles cost £72M, and the 6,000 police officers who will be on duty this week makes it the biggest security operation in Scotland since then.

The mind boggles at the sums of money involved.

But I do not object one jot to it being spent. Nor do I object to huge swathes of the nation's motorway system being closed and turned into a car park, at goodness knows what cost to Scotland's businesses.

I do not have a problem with the fact the free movement of the majority, going about their legal business, is being halted by Scotrail managing director Steve Montgomery as train services between Glasgow and Paisley and between Cumbernauld and Motherwell are suspended.

Nor I am concerned that many going to this special event in Bellahouston Park will be taken there by a one-every-four-minutes special subway service and will not have to pay a penny for the ride if they wear a wristband handed out when they pay a £20 donation to the organization which our visitor rules.

I am not even the least perturbed that because the entrace fee is called a donation and not a fee, there will be no VAT to pay to to the British government.

What does make me angry though is that if anyone exercises their democratic right to protest - just as gay rights activist Peter Thatchell plans to do when our visitor is in England - there will be the usually bellowing buffoons thundering their hate filled facist message about bigotry and Scotland's shame.

For me, that identifies these loud voices as belonging to the real bigots, who will not tolerate any view but their own, or those acting as what Lenin called, useful idiots, on their behalf.

So let the visit commence, and let all Scots from all backgrounds puff out our chests with pride at our wee country's great tolerance.

And let an Englishman and an Irishman have the last word.

Shakespeare wrote: "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

And my favourite comedian, Dave Allen's closing line....MAY YOUR GOD GO WITH YOU.

TARTAN ARMY TERRORISTS SHAME SCOTLAND AGAIN

2010-09-11T10:10:00.000+01:00

TAM FERRY is not a name I know too well. And I'm pretty sure there are not many readers out there who recognise the moniker.

However, it seems he is some sort of ''spokesman'' for the Tartan Army. Funny, I thought that was Hamish Husband. But we will leave aside any possible internal wrangling.

We all know the Tartan Army. They are the geezers who berate Old Firm fans for living in the past, harping on about, and singing about the Battle of the Boyne, the Potato Famine and IRA terrorists.

Yet these kilted buffoons get kitted out in ridiculous psuedo military attire - many Scottish soldiers in the REAL tartan Army may find this offensive - while singing about a battle in 1314 and never getting more up to date than April 1746.

Of course, in this free and democratic society, that is their right. If they want to prance around like prize prats they are perfectly at liberty to do so.

What they have no right to do is shame Scotland with their rude, boorish and entirely un-Scottish behaviour whenever the national anthem of a visiting country is played at Hampden.

They were at it again last week when their boos, jeers and catcalls echoed around the old ground when the Liechtenstein anthem was played.

The following day the president and acting chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, big bluff straight talking George Peat took them to task. At last.

But, instead of showing contrition, the Tartan Army fired back a reply through Tam Ferry which attempted to ridicule Peat for having the temerity to launch any sort of critical comment at them .

In many ways it is hard to blame Ferry and his cohorts among this wee band of deluded Jacobites. For, for years, they have lived a charmed life with hardly a word of critical comment written or spoken about them in newspapers, radio or television.

Jim Traynor of Daily Record and BBC fame is a noteable exception, and because he has told the truth about them, has been subjected to abuse by kilted clowns in airports, on planes, and in the streets of many a foreign town when on assisgment.

Not wee Silly Billy though. He has even been spotted on at least one occasion - Copenhagen - out on the razzle with the feathered fools and leading them in that appalling dirge which goes back to laud a battle fought 376 years before the one Rangers supporters sing about, and which he finds so offensive.

I know among the press pack I am not alone in my views about the Tartan Army's behaviour, though, Traynor apart, I am on the only journalist willing to write the views so many of my colleagues express in private, but are too cowed to express publicly, perhaps by the stifling atmosphere of politcal correctness which stifles any decent debate in this country - and by country I mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Therefore, I am indebted to a regular writer of letters to the Herald, Glenn Elder of Glasgow, whose latest rational contribution was published in that paper's Fans With Laptops, section on Friday.

Mr Elder wanted to know why Peat's condemnation of the Tartan Army booing the national anthem of vistors has waited so long? Why, he asked, did the SFA president not take them to task for their treatment of God Save The Queen when Northern Ireland were at Hampden?

It is a very good question.

Mr Elder went on to remind readers that several years ago he wrote to the Herald over his embarrassment at hearing the German anthem booed while sitting with German friends at Hampden. He continued by correctly recalling, the following year both the French and Italian anthems were abused by the Tartan Army.

I have no doubt Mr Elder is a true Scot. A man with a partiotic pulse, but also the sort of Scot whose internationalism means he can never be as closed minded and self serving as those hordes of the Tartan Army in their psuedo militaristic uniforms.

Tam Ferry and any other so called ''spokesman'' for them would be well advised to remember another, and much more proud chapter in this once great nation's history. It is called The Scottish Enlightenment.

JACKO'S TOP CLASS EXCLUSIVE AND A SILLY BILLY

2010-09-09T20:39:00.000+01:00

STAND up Keith Jackson, and take a bow for the best Scotland exclusive since...well, since your last one.

Now, as anyone knows, I think the Daily Record - which gives a column to George Galloway - is a rotten rag, and its plunging circulation figures show you all agree.

But credit where credit is due, and Keith Jackson's back page lead ,which lifted the lid off Craig Levein's both barrels rant at James McFadden and Kris Boyd at half time in that disgrace of a match against Liechtenstein, was a rare insight. Top class reporting.

The fact that Levein has not been out of the traps like a Shawfield odds on favourite to rubbish the story, merely serves to confirm just how copper bottom the tale is. Though I know, as any hack worth two bob also knows, that Jacko, however Wacko, would never have written it had he not been certain of of his facts.

Whatever happens now, and however many times however many folk may try to deny the story's authenticity, nobody will believe them. The tale is set in stone.

Which leaves Levein with a problem. For whatever is said inside the dressing room is meant to stay there. Its sanctity should equal that of the confessional. Or least, that's what every manager from Bill Nicholson to Craig Brown that I have dealt with has told me.

What Levein now faces is a squad full of players who will be worrying when a dip in form sees them next in line for the treatment at half time, and public humiliation.

There was no surprise in the news that Levein had borrowed Sir Alex Ferguson's hairdryer and turned it on Faddy. Plus Boyd.

After all, the Scotland manager had made his feelings about McFadden known when explaining why he was axed for the game in Lithuania, and again, in his post Liechtenstein match press conference ,he put the boot into the Birmingham City man.

In doing so he was ignoring the wisdom of, and precedent set by, every Scotland manager I have dealt with professionally - a list which goes back to Ally MacLeod.

There would have been no chance of any of them - including the giants who have held the position, Jock Stein, Craig Brown, Walter Smith and Alex McLeish - making such a schoolboy mistake.

Levein may yet live to regret what he appears to have allowed to happen to McFadden, and to a lesser extent Boyd, and I will be surprised if he doesn't have to field calls from Big Eck and Gordon Strachan, two players who were always publicly protected at club and country level by managers of such stature as Stein and Sir Alex Ferguson.

None of which is - nor should it be - of any concern to the Daily Record's Keith Jackson. He got the exclusive, and that's what he is there for.

But, while doffing my old reporter's fedora to Wacko, what can we possibly say about the Silly Billy at the Record's rival?

For some guy at the Sun actually wrote that the Record was wrong, on the morning after the match, to describe Scotland's performance as an ABSOLUTE DISGRACE.

At least it was the wee Silly Billy's name on it. Though Levein himself could not have penned a better or more bitter piece of propoganda.

At least though Levein is a proper manager - if perhaps not as good a one as he thinks he is. For this particular sad wee Silly Billy is really just as wannabee who once allowed his pipe dream to get so much the better of him that he was spotted sitting on the bench next to Des McKeown, when the now Scotland spy was the manager of Stenhousmuir.

Not that I would wish any reader to take this as an attack on the Sun's sports section, which it most certainly is not. Ian King, the head of sport, does a superb job, and there are lots of fine and talented scribes to be found in his section.

Roger Hannah, Robert Grieve and Andy Devlin are Three Musketeers of Dumas class. It's just a pitty they have to share a page with such a Silly Wee Billy.

This is the man who suggested the Scots were gung ho at Hampden. Gung ho? With a back four against a solo striker, plus Lee McCulloch sitting in, five to ten yards in front of that rearguard.

This is the man who, in Thursday's Sun drivelled that he was only guessing that Levein might regret being talked out of sticking with the shape of his team in Lithuania.

Guessing? I can see he can't write. But can't he read either? After all, Levein said just that within an hour of the final whistle on Tuesday, and his comments were plastered all over every paper in the land, including the one from which Silly Billy steals a wage.

But, not content with telling us, on the Sun's sports pages, what was wrong with any critical comment about what good sound, solid and experienced observers reckoned was Scotland's worst competitive performance at Hampden in half a century, Wee Silly Billy then invaded the serious part of the paper to lecture us on Koran burning in America.

As a former Sun columnist might have written....YOU COULDN'T MAKE HIM UP.

SCOTLAND'S SHAME

2010-09-08T15:14:00.000+01:00

THE timing of the Daily Mail's splash revealing there are 30,000 Scots off work suffering from depression could not have been better.

That's just about the number who sat and suffered at Hampden through the worst Scottish performance on home soil in a competive match for over half a century.

And that's not just my view, but also the firm opinion of two even more senior and experienced sports writers - proud Scots both.

However, what is even worse than how badly the Scots played is the attitude being ingrained in a small sect of the younger generation of hacks, perhaps in no small way due to the drip feed of comments from manager Craig Levein.

One of them, even before the match, and reflecting on what had happened in Lithuania, insisted that we just didn't have the players and weren't good enough.

Which sounded suspiciously like the defeatist mantra Bertri Vogts used to preach after another of his blunders had seen the Scots humiliated.

It is also at complete odds with reality.

Walter Smith instilled an immediate improvement in the national side when he took over, and in one match, against a nation comparable in lowly status to Liechtenstein, The Faroes, sent out a team which won 6-0.

Of that side, five started under Levein against Liechtenstein, Davie Weir, Darren Fletcher, James McFadden, Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller. And, when you consider Paul Hartley, who played against the Faroes, was in Levein's squad, while Allan McGregor in place of Craig Gordon hardly weakens the side, it is interesting.

Scotland were five ahead by half time in that match, with all the first half scorers, Fletcher, Faddy, Boyd and Miller, in action this week.

What followed that extremely impressive performance and confidence boosting trashing of the minnows, was a midweek trip to Lithuania and a 2-1 win for Smith's team.

Fast forward a couple of years to September 2008, a mere two years ago, and the venue is Paris, where Alex McLeish masterminded a team containing no fewer than SEVEN of the same starters against Liechtenstein. The result a 1-0 win over the French and what, for me, was Scotland's greatest ever single triumph.

Therefore, if Smith could do it with so many of the same players against the Faroese and then in Lithuania, and McLeish could manage it against the more formidable French forces in Paris, with even more of the men at Levein's disposal, the question is, why can't the current Scotland manager?

During Levein's reign we have seen an inept first half in a friendly against the Czech Republic almost ignored by the critics after a second half goal gave the Scots a win, followed by a serious seeeing to by Sweden in another friendly, a poor, plodding and unimaginative goalless draw in Lithuania - where Smith won - and then the apology of the show against Lichtenstein.

After that Swedish flop I called attention to the danger of Levein's remarks that the game had been no more than a pre season friendly and didn't matter. It did, as all international results go towards FIFA ratings which, in turn, are part of the calculations when nations are seeded for the draw for qualifying campaigns.

After the snore draw in Kaunus, Levein seemed to be upset at even mild critical comment and, according to Scotland's biggest selling national daily newspaper, had a bit of a pop at the Tartan Army.

Then last night he commented , he had said about Lithuania, that he set out the team to play in a certain way, but changed that for Liechtenstein, against his better judgement. He went on to ponder there was maybe a lesson for him there, adding that he took a risk.

A RISK?

With a back four, plus Lee McCulloch patrolling no more than between five and ten yards in front of the defence as added insurance.

Against Liechtenstien? At Hampden? Where such giants as Spain, Holland, Germany and Italy have all either been seen off or given the fright of their lives, and where Walter Smith's Scots beat France.

Given what he said we must therefore believe that had Levein not gone against his better judgement, and instead stuck with the way he set out his team in Lithuania, Scotland would have faced Lichtenstein, with Scott Brown joining McCulloch protecting a four man rearguard in a five strong midfield, with a lone striker.

Against Lichtenstein, a nation with a population smaller than the crowd at Hampden, and who included an office worker and a student in their team of odds and sods.

Now I know there are many out there who really do not give a hoot about the Scotland team. Rangers supporters, turned off by the Tartan Army's hatred of all things red, white and blue, and Celtic fanatics who feel more at home backing the Republic of Ireland.

Both sides of the Old Firm divide are wrong. If you are Scottish, then the Scottish team is the national side you should be supporting.

I've got no problems with Rangers followers who see themselves as stoutly British, and therefore also wish well to the English team, or with any Bhoys who feel they have an Irish background and therefore take an interest in the Republic.

But first and foremost all Scots should, at international level, support Scotland. It matters. And it is why, everything that has happened since Craig Levein took over my nation's national team makes me feel like joining those 30,000 who are too depressed to work.
.
......AND THERE'S MORE

Where LeggoLand goes first, others soon follow.

For it would seem a whole host of columnists on some of the nation's daily and Sunday newspapers are having their agendas set by what they appear to have read here.

For instance... today, and after almost a week of silence in the national press about Judge Andrew Blake's sin of ommision regarding the 1996 IRA bomb which devasted Manchester, there was finally a reference to it in The Herald.

It only took 48 hours from the time I called attention to how ludicrous Judge Andrew Blake's rant was, before a national Scottish newspaper also pointed it out.

And last Sunday in the Sunday Mail not one, but TWO columnists on the sports pages, followed in my footsteps by attacking Dermond Desmond's latest bleating about the Old Firm joining the English Premiership.

The next day, in The Herald, the always highly readable Michael Grant made it the subject of his column, even going so far as to point out - as I did - how seemingly pathetic it is for the Irishman who owns a Scottish club, to discuss its business only in England.

That's not all. Cast your mind back to what I commented about the late Jimmy Reid and how crazy it was for anyone to claim his speech to students at Glasgow University was the best since the Gettysburg Address. I added that almost any of Winston Churchill's great speeches were better.

It took just a couple of days for an old pal and sparring partner, Michael Kelly, in his column in the Scotsman, to attempt, as I did, to dispel the Reid myth.

One time Celtic director and former Lord Provost of Glasgow, Kelly, even got close enough to my thinking, to invoke Churchill's name, mentioning his Iron Curtain masterpiece.

Now, either a lot of the nation's opinion formers are reading LeggoLand and following in the trail I am blazing, or amazingly we all seem to agree.

In which case some advice to the man from the Herald, those two Sunday Mail columnists, and the two Michaels, Grant and Kelly. See a doctor. Or maybe I should.

JUDGE ANDREW BLAKE and the IRA BOMB

2010-09-06T17:34:00.000+01:00

DO you remember when judges seemed to live in some sort of hermetically sealed wee world of their own, cut off from reality?

You know the sort of thing - ''Television?''

''Yes, M'Lud, a new eletctronic device for the entertainment of the lower classes. ''

''The Beatles?''

''A popular musical quarter who find favour with the younger element of the population, M'Lud.''

We all thought their sort of had been consigned to the dustbin of history, and that the men and women who sit on the benches of the courts throughout this United Kingdom today, have some sort of contact with reality, as well as a deep sense of history.

But we have been wrong. Massively, comprensively and unerringly wrong, wrong, wrong.

And if you do not believe me then consider the words of Judge Andrew Blake as he sent to jail - where they belong - 11 of the thugs who caused violence of the streets on Manchester in May 2008.

It was, according to this prize prat, the worst destruction visited upon Manchester since the Nazi war machine rained bombs on it during the Blitz.

Now, let's pause for a breath, while we take in the scale of such an observation. While we do so, it may be worth considering why, in the three days since he blundered, nobody in the Scottish media has taken Judge Andrew Blake to task for his amazing lack of historical perspective.

And the sin of omission.

I would like to think it is a combination of those who run Scotland's newspapers being just as ignorant as the judge. For surely there can be no other motive for the printed press, plus the broadcast media the length and breadth of Scotland, failing to point out just what poppycock Blake's ill researched and historically inaccurate rant was.

It was shortly before mid-day on June 15, 1996, the day before Father's Day, that a 3000lb bomb, planted by the IRA, exploded and ripped the heart out of Manchester, injuring 212 innocent men, women and children.

Mancunians - and I know many having spent much time in their splendid city - still look back in wonder at the fact nobody was killed, calling it The Miracle of Manchester.

The cowardly IRA bombers planted their massive bomb close to the always busy Arndale Shopping centre. The 3000lb bomb so lovingly prepared by the IRA terrorists was the largest device exploded on mainland Britain in peacetime.

That bomb was nearly TEN times BIGGER than anything the German bombers carried during the Blitz.

Such was the complete carnage that IRA blockbuster bomb caused , buildings which were not reduced to rubble, were in such a bad state they had to be demolished.

A total of 400 businesses were affected, with 160 of them so badly hit they were unable to resume trading.

The initial rebuilding took over three years, with some redevelopment going on until 2005, at a total cost of £1.2BILLION.

Insurers paid out £600M and the 212 victims of the IRA bomb blast received a total of almost £1.5M in compensation for their injuries, many of them horrific.

Yet Judge Andrew Blake, blithely ignored all of this, to jump from thousands of Nazi German bombers raining their destruction on Didsbury, Prestwich, Sale, Altrincham and Trafford Park, to a few hundred soccer thugs on the rampage.

Surely it could not have been a lack of knowledge. For, if anyone should know the history it is Judge Andrew Blake, born on 18 August 1946, and educated first at Ampleforth College and then Hertford College, before graduating from Oxford with an MA in history.

That's right....HISTORY! As the incomporable Richard Littlejohn might say - you couldn't make it up.

Especially when, after being called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1971, he moved to practice in Manchester in 1972, where he remained active until being made a circuit judge in 1999.

Therefore he was active there when the 1996 IRA bomb shook the city of Manchester to its very foundations.

Maybe the fact that Greater Manchester Police failed to put anyone in the dock - there have been no convictions and , according to that Force it is now extremely unlikely there ever will be - allowed the fact of a 3000lb IRA bomb exploding, injuring 212 people, causing £1.2BILLION worth of damage which took nearly a decade to put right, to slip completely out of Judge Andrew Blake's mind.

If that is the case - and any other explaination does not bear thinking about - then it is time for the authorities to take a close look at the condition of 64-year-old Judge Andrew Blake's memory, in order to make sure he is still mentally nimble enough to sit in judgement in a court of law.

The IRA bomb of 15 June, 1996 was the worst destruction inflicted on Manchester since the Nazi Blitz, followed by the 1981 Moss Side riots, when police were firebombed in a 48-hour period when law and order teetered on the brink of oblivion in that fine old Victorian City.

The cowardly actions of those few on the streets of Manchester in May 2008, were shocking. But they fall way short of the terrorist IRA and its 3000lb bomb in that city in 1996.

And if that - and Moss Side - had slipped Judge Andrew Blake's memory, well .....he kens noo!

ARCHIBALD GERARD KANE, LLOYDS AND RANGERS

2010-09-03T17:37:00.000+01:00

WHEN even such a clever man as Alistair Darling admits to being hoodwinked by them, then you know just what they are. Bankers!

But there is something about one particular banker which perplexes me. Why is the man responsible at board level for the activites of Lloyds Bank in Scotland so seemingly reticent?

And why is the nation's media so shy about telling us the life story of Archibald Gerard Kane, the banker who can call the shots over the debt owed to his bank by Rangers?

After all Archie, as he's known in that ''bible'' of the famous, Who's Who, or Archibald on the Lloyds website, is a classic rags to riches story. The sort of' '' lad of pairts'' tale usually so beloved by our newspapers and broadcasting organizations.

And, given his relationship with that other great Scottish institution, Rangers, I find it hard to comprehend just what is going on.

On numerous occasions I have mentioned this to a number of senior people in journalism, and none of them has been able to give me an answer for the silence.

So, for their benefit, and for the information of those interested in such stories, here is what I know about Archie Gerard Kane, as his entry in Who's Who calls him.

Kane, it tells us, was born in the 16th June, 1952, and his parents were Archie and Rose . He was, by his own admission, from a poor background.

In an interview with Alasdair Northrop in the serious and respected Insider Magazine on June 11th this year, Kane reveals how, for the first six years of his life he and his parents shared one room in an aunt's house in Hamilton.

Clearly he still feels an affinity with Lanarkshire as his public address is listed as being Bellshill.

Those humble origins were nothing out of the ordinary in those days, as I grew up with my mum and dad in a room and kitchen in a Maryhill tenement in the 50s and 60s until I was 12 and we moved next door to a two room and kitchen.

Therefore I understand his comment about those years of: ''When you are young you don't think much about it.''

Quite right!

In the interview he went on to praise mother, Rose, as the driving force in his life, adding:''My mother encouraged me school-wise, and to go to university. My dad did everything from being a bus driver, to a wages clerk on a construction site and was well read and knowledgeable about politics and history.''

For the rest, the interview , as you would expect given the nature of the Insider Magazine, is as dry as dust, concentrating on the world of high finance and banking.

Certainly Kane is a man well qualified to talk about such subjects, despite having no banking qualifications, having studied accountancy at Glasgow University, emerging with a BAacc.

For, as well as being the executive director on the Lloyds Board, responsible for Scotland, Kane has 41 different relationships with his fellow board members in nine different organizations across six different industries.

Who could possibly argue against such a busy bee being worth the few quid short of £1.5M he trousered last year from a bank which was rescued by the taxpayers?

As I said, a classic rags to riches story, the sort usually documented in minute detail in newspapers and on radio and television in Scotland.

Yet, despite extensive research, there appears to be nothing known about Kane since he and his mum and dad moved out his aunt's house when he was six in 1958, until he graduated from Glasgow University, probably some time around 1972-ish.

Maybe some of his old school pals or fellow undergraduates, who sunk of a few pints with him in the Men's Union can fill us in. Somebody must remember him.

Strangely there are no newspaper reports of this local boy made good returning to his primary school in Hamilton as the guest of honour on prizegiving day. Nor the hint of him addressing the present day pupils at whatever secondary school where he studied so hard, encouraged by mother, Rose, to win a place at Glasgow University.

In fact Who's Who is as much in the dark about this period in the life of the man who holds sway over Rangers, and who works for a taxpayers' funded organization, as I am.

Prime minister David Cameron lists his school as we all know, as Eton, and Gordon Brown tell us he went to Kirkcaldy High School.

Tony Blair even goes so far as to list Durham Choisters School before he went to Fettes, while Nick Clegg is a product of Westminster School.

Good grief, even shamed Fred the Shred - Sir Fred Goodwin, - owns up to having gone to Paisley Grammar School.

Of course perhaps Kane is ashamed of his humble origins. After all, Edinburgh is Scotland's banking centre, and when the folk there ask what school you went to, they are trying to uncover your social status, revealed by whether or not you attended a fee paying school.

If that's the case then shame on you Archie Gerard Kane ,though I find that hard to believe of a man who, despite having come a long way has still admirably kept his Lanarkshire roots.

I know a wee bit about Lanarkshire, as my dad, Andrew was born and bred in Coatbridge, before having the great good sense to marry a Maryhill lassie and move there.

So I know only too well the obsession of Lanarkshire's young men with sport in general and football in particular. Which is why I find it strange that in Who's Who, Kane lists his hobbies as golf, tennis and ski-ing. Hardly tastes he would have cultivated growing up in Lanarkshire in the 1950s and 60s.

But then again, as former Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted, they are slippery customers. Bankers!

ABERDEEN

2010-09-02T10:08:00.000+01:00

IT came as no surprise to learn of an outbreak of madness on the appropriately named Aberdeen Mad website following Ricky Foster's switch to Rangers.

In fact such a reaction from the north east was as predictable as it was pathetic and just about summed up a sizeable section of those who follow Aberdeen.

It also, perhaps, illustrates just how the club has changed from the era when it was a pleasure for any Glasgow based journalist to visit Pittodrie in the days of shrewd old Dick Donald and the friendly and intellectually formidable Chris Anderson.

Even before Foster's move to Rangers sparked off the usual spewing of vile bile from many Dons devotees, I was pondering events at Pittodrie and trying to fathom just what was going on at a club which still appears to be living with the regret of its treatment of Jimmy Calderwood.

Firstly, there was the strange television appearance of manager Mark McGhee a week ago. McGhee appeared to be bouyed by starting the season with three straight wins, and when asked - as all SP managers were in the wake of Celtic, Motherwell and Dundee United being kicked out of Europe - how Scottish clubs could improve at that level, he launched into a strange tirade.

According to McGhee, all that is needed for success is money. It was, he insisted in what appeared to be dogmatic style, one thousand per cent down to money, adding that if he was given enough he would guarantee Aberdeen winning the Champions League.

That was indeed strange as when Rangers spending went wild they couldn't even get out of the sections, and nor could Celtic when their wage bill was higher than that of two thirds of of the Premiership teams.

Yet, in an era of Old Firm budget cuts, Alex McLeish blazed the trail as Rangers became the first Scottish team to reach the knock out stages of the Champions League, followed by Gordon Strachan's Celtic, twice, before Walter Smith steered Rangers on a march to the UEFA Cup Final.

And didn't Porto win the Champions League a mere six years ago? And without spending the sort of money in either transfer fees or wages lashed out by Dick Advocaat or Martin O'Neill.

Nearer to home Chelsea have been the big spenders of English football - before being overtaken by Manchester City. Yet we have yet to see the Champions League trophy at Stamford Bridge.

While City, whose outlay in the recently closed transfer window amounted to more than a third of all the cash spent in the Premiership, will struggle to win the English title.

McGhee's stoutly held belief is shown to be wrong. Cash of course plays a part, but it is not, never has been, and never will be, the be all and end of all of soccer success, especially at the very top level.

Perhaps McGhee was having a bad day. Perhaps the question caught him on the hop. These things happen.

But, when McGhee's Aberdeen were beaten by Kilmarnock 24 hours after his Euro outburst, more was to follow from the Pittodrie manager.

He turned his blazing guns on an unfortunate 18-year-old striker, who had come on as a substitute for Chris Maguire and whose mistake contributed to the late Kilmarnock winner.

Mitch Megginson is the kid's name, and McGhee was reported in the local evening newspaper as saying that he hoped the player had sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling. He added , he hoped Megginson felt terrible.

It was around about then that my mind's eye conjured pictures of Dick Donald and Chris Anderson, chairman and vice chairman of a three man board at a time when Aberdeen were winning titles and cups at home and in Europe.

McGhee was a player at Pittodrie when these two giants of Aberdeen and Scottish football history were around, and I wonder if he took a moment to reflect on what their reaction may have been to his outspoken and public attack on an 18-year-old laddie.

And what they - especially old Dick, who was a true canny Aberdonian, though as hospitable a man as I have ever had the privilege of meeting - would have thought about his cash-cures-all-theory.

These are questions which Aberdeen supporters would do better to address, rather than indulging in a blind hatred at all things Rangers, and telling proud son of the Granite City, Foster that he is no longer welcome back in his home town.

I have no doubt at all just what Dick Donald and Chris Anderson's reaction to that sort of nonsense would have been.

DERMOT DESMOND

2010-09-01T11:07:00.000+01:00

THIS is what sports writers call a ''Scotland week,'' and is something they always look forward to as a chance to break out of the same old Old Firm round of interviews.

However, suddenly Celtic's billionaire owner Dermot Desmond has put his head above the parapet to raise just about the hoariest of same old, same old chesnuts..... the Old Firm joining the English Premiership.

First things first. One of my colleagues who attends the Masters in Augusta every year always takes the opportunity to confront Desmond there - politely as he's a well brought up lad - with the request for an interview. Every year he is met with a refusal.

Perhaps Desmond prefers to speak to a soundbite chasing radio man, as opposed to a journalist who would be certain to ask penetrating and pertinent questions. I don't know the answer to that one.

What I do know is the idea of the Old Firm upping sticks, quitting Scotland and playing in the top flight in England will not happen in my lifetime.

And I aim to be around for a fair few years, despite the threat from some keyboard warrior nutter to shoot me.

It's more than a decade now since the story started gathering pace in the media south of the border, leading to the London based Sunday newspaper sports editor who was my boss badgering me for stories about it.

Now, this particular sports editor was not the one who refused to publish my eye witness account of what I saw in Manchester, just before he went on the run as the Met's Fraud Squad closed in on him.

No, this gaffer, who has deserverdly gone on to bigger and better things, was willing to listen to me. And what I told him then still holds good today.

NUMBER ONE - The English Premiership is a hugely successful league and has no need of the Old Firm to boost its financial worth.

NUMBER TWO - FIFA - not UEFA as so many of my less well informed colleagues continue to say hold sway on this matter - would not tolerate it, as it would open the floodgates for large clubs in Holland moving to Germany, Belgium to France, and Portugal to Spain, as well as Chile to Argentina etc etc.

NUMBER THREE - The clubs in the bottom half of the Premiership would hardly vote to make their own survival tougher in the that gold mine. The vote of 20-0 against the Old Firm, taken long ago, would be repeated again if taken tomorrow.

My boss told me to write just that, which I did, and on each subsequent occasion when the idea resurfaced he asked me if anything had changed, and on being told by me that it hadn't, agreed the subject wasn't worth last week's fish and chip paper.

Yet here we have Desmond, who I get the feeling likes to think of himself as a bit of a wheeler dealer on football's big stage, popping up with it again.

Sure, there may be the odd geezer south of the border, Bolton's Phil Garside was one a few months ago, who will refloat the idea, perhaps even trying to find a backdoor way in via the Championship.

NUMBER FOUR - Championship clubs are hardly going to want to make it harder to gain entry to that Premiership pot on gold by bringing in the Old Firm as serious competition.

Which takes us back to the Celtic owner and what many may believe to be his pie-in-the-sky statement on the airwaves, and a question which many have asked over many years.

Why is it that when succcessful, high powered and extremely rich businessmen enter the world of football, they appear to leave all their business acumen behind them?

But back let's get back to where we started, and the ''Scotland week.''

And one man to give Desmond a run for his money in the last few days has been Scotland's still to be tried and tested at this level, manager Craig Levein.

His revelation that he had made an attempt to tempt Newcastle's Nigerian born striker, Shola Ameobi to become a ''Scot'' on the strength of the fact he holds a British passport amazed me on a couple of levels.

To begin with the idea that Scotland should go in search of mercenaries to join the colours appals me. It's bad enough that we take advantage of FIFA rules to cap players who were born in England - or any other country - neither of whose parents are Scottish, and who have only one grandparent who is a Scot.

But to actively seek to cap someone who hasn't even muched a roll 'n square slice? It's almost too terrible for words.

There is though a more practical aspect to this saga which is even more worrying, and which the Scottish Football Association's PR machine - which is much more media savvy these days - has managed to divert attention from.

This problem first arose when a young reporter who was pally with Rangers' calamity captain, Lorenzo Amoruso, got the Italian, who was nowhere near good enough to play for Italy, talking on a slow news day about his desire to don the dark blue.

The FIFA rule says that if a player has lived in a country long enough and hold that's nation's passport, he qualifies to play for it.

In the peculiar case of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, this means any of the Home Countries can pick such a player.

The SFA politely declined by Amo's offer, but some time later the same hack went to Nacho Novo - there are a lot of slow news days for the tabloid headline hunters - and produced the same tale. Only the names had been changed.

By this time the excellent Gordon Smith was the SFA chief executive and he stamped on the silliness and brokered an official deal with the FA in London and its counterparts in Belfast and Cardiff, a so called gentlemen's agreement, that none of the Home Associations would take advantage of this disgraceful FIFA rule.

At the time the story was given wide ranging coverage. That means the tabloids, the middlemarket papers, the heavies, radio and television gave it prominence, not just here, but in England, Wales and Ulster too.

Granted Levein was not in charge of the Scotland team at the time, but it was a story which was hard to miss, and difficult to confuse with the one with Andy Driver at its centre, which is an entirely different matter.

Of course, none of this will matter should Scotland return from Lithuania in the early hours of Saturday morning with three European Championship qualifying points in the bag ,and then double their tally by seeing off Lichtenstein at Hampden on Tuesday night.

For me, the opening four matches must harvest at least seven points, and the best way to reach that tally is by winning the first two ties and drawing in the Czech Republic next month, as the fourth outing is when World Champions , Spain visit Hampden .

First things first, though. And who knows, after this ''Scotland week'' is finished some of my press pals may turn their attention to Dermot Desmond, and explain the facts of football life to him.

FAMOUS FIVE

2010-08-30T22:33:00.000+01:00

TO the Four Just Men of Davie Provan, Andy Walker, Charlie Nicholas and Craig Burley, add my name. A sort of Famous Five, if you like.

Let me explain. The four former Celtic and Scotland men now make their living commenting in the media, both on the airwaves and in newspapers.

And pretty frank and fearless they are. As recently as Sunday, in their newspaper columns, Provan and Walker were highly critical of much that has been going on at Celtic in the last few weeks.

But, in the comments posted on what had been written, Celtic supporters had another take on the insight these two highly informative and interesting observers provided. And that take was just one insult after another.

It's been the same for Burley, with what seems like a special sort of loathing among those who follow Celtic reserved for one of the best players I have seen wearing their Hoops, Nicholas.

Unless I am mistaken it seems that nobody who ever played for Celtic is allowed to be critical of the club. Instead, in some sort of article of blind faith, they should be cheerleaders for the club, no matter what. Which is not, as any old hack would tell you, the job of a journalist.

As it so happens, Provan is a particular favourite of mine, and I regard his column as one of my weekend highlights, to such an extent, that even when I was writing a Sunday newspaper column I would freely admit mine was merely the second best on the Sabbath.

There was even one glorious spell when I knew that if wasn't giving Berti Vogts a deserved going over in my column, Provan would be taking care of him in his.

Not that I agree with everything in every one of his columns, or with all the views Walker, Nicholas and Burley express. But, as someone with a passionate belief in free speech and democracy, I will defend the right of those with whom I disagree to have a voice.

By all means, disagree. Please debate. Even argue. But there is a limit, and unfortunately there are those out there who have no wish to merely disagree. No desire to debate. Nor even an apptitude for arguement.

However, at least those who can't just disagree, debate or argue, and who are of a green and white, hue only appear to go potty with their four former players when one, or all, of them have a critical comment to make about the Parkhead club.

I though, seem to be in a class of my own, inviting the most vile, and at times seemingly uneducated bile from a section of the population, no matter what my subject matter may be.

Never was this more obvious than over the last few days, in the wake of my blog which sought to put into context what happened when Rangers played in the UEFA Cup Final in Manchester in May 2008.

At first the comments came from many who had been there, and shared incidents they and people they knew had been involved in or witnessed, with many adding that they joined me in deploring the moronic minority who behaved in such a deplorable fashion.

Later came the abuse, much of which brought a wry chuckle, given the seemingly low level of education and intelligence which marked it. Though of course it could well have come from professional people trying to disguise their status.

Such was the case in the past when a colleague suffered threats. When he called in the police they traced the culprit to a £300,000 house in the leafy suburbs.

I wonder where this particular electronic trail will lead as Strathclyde's finest follow it, after one comment posted contained the threat that I would be shot. It will be interesting to watch the police investigation progress.

MANCHESTER MYTH

2010-08-27T22:49:00.000+01:00

THERE was nothing more certain, than when Rangers were paired with Manchester United in the Champions League, it would spark of a feeding frenzy in the press.

When the draw was made I predicted, in a telehphone conversation with a friend, that Rangers supporters had better get ready for the badly reported events in Manchester in May 2008 to be repeated....

Over and over, and over, again and again

What even I could not predict though was that one newspaper - the Daily Mail since you ask - would go as far as to report Greater Manchester Police could tell UEFA the match must only take place behind closed doors.

That was just about as irresponsible piece of journalism as I've seen for many a long day.

For instance,did the the Daily Mail suggest that this summer's T in the Park should take place behind closed doors? No! Yet there has been murder, mayhem and rape at this event. And less than half the people at it than there were Rangers supporters in Manchester for the UEFA Cup Final.

T in the Park went on again this year and there was more violence and drug peddling, just as there will be next summer. Maybe the Daily Mail will find there were a few Rangers supporters at the music festival and blame them for all the trouble.

Some of the coverage of the events in that city just over two years ago made me ponder - and wonder at decisions taken by desk-bound newspaper executives, despite input from journalists who were eye witnesses to many of the things which happened.

One paper which was willing to print eye witness accounts by reporters and photographers on the ground, of the way some police officers behaved, was the Daily Record.

I had one experience myself of the attitude of Greater Manchester Police as I made my way back to my hotel, just after midnight. As I passed along Piccadilly my way was barred by the fierce sight of a line of police, fully kitted out in riot gear, and brandishing the sort of deadly looking batons Dixon of Dock Green never carried

This line of steel stretched across the street, preventing me getting to my hotel, and, not being too sure of any other route, I approached one of these scary looking riot police.

Now, as anyone who knows me would tell you, as opposed to some of my colleagues who go their work dressed as though ready for a shift on a building site, it is my habit to look respectable.

So there I was, a suited and booted middle aged man, wearing a shirt and tie, approaching a policeman to ask how best to reach my hotel.

My reasonable request was met by a snarl, followed by the brandish towards me of a riot stick, which would have looked more at home on the streets of Paris in 1968, and topped off by his bark of, ''f**k off.''

Fortunately - and unusually for me - my UEFA press pass - a large and impressive document - was still hanging from my neck, just out of sight under my buttoned jacket which, stepping back, I undid.

When I motioned this pass to a prominent position ,and then said :''Excuse me officer, I am officially UEFA accredited,'' there was a quick double take and he then told me of an alternative way to my hotel.

Now, needless to say, there are those of you who are wondering why this information did not appear in my column in the Sunday newspaper I worked for then.

Only now can I tell you that it was written in a column, which also deplored the action of the minority who caused the trouble, and the few who took advantage of it to loot a few shops.

I also wrote than I took the view that only when the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - and that included the actions and attitude of the police - was uncovered, could a final verdict be delivered.

Within an hour the sports editor was on the phone saying that no, he could not accept what I was saying.
Despite reading the accounts in that day's Record to him, and asking him to read them for himself, he laid down the law, and the column had to be rewritten.

To this day I am certain only my UEFA accreditation saved me from a whack on the head from that angry and aggressive riot cop, plus probably arrest when I came out of a coma.

How many other innocents, who didn't have my credentials, were battered by a police force which, in my view, gave every impression of being out of control?

Remember too Greater Manchester Police was leaderless, and in state of shock after its chief constable had climbed to the top of a hill, swallowed a bottle of vodka, and committed suicide.

It is also worth nothing that by seven on the Friday morning a senior policewoman was put in front of the nation's television cameras to show a soft side. It was classic spin. And it worked.

Now, nobody should mistake any of this as an apology for the morons who threw bottles at the televsion screens when they failed right at the start of the UEFA Cup Final. How did they think that was going to help the screens? As I said, morons.

Nor should it be seen as a defence for anyone who joined in with the senseless attack on the defenceless policeman, the pictures of which were shocking and sickening.

I hope the forces of law and order hunt down the last culrpit, and that they face the full Majesty of the law, and feel its full weight.

But, and this was the view of the leader of the local council in Manchester, only just over 1000 at the very most were involved. That is a little more than 1000 from 2000,000. Or, to put it another way, just one HALF of one per cent

Which is a lot less than the percentage of murderers, rapists and drug dealers who have been at the last two T in the Park events.

I am however, still wondering what was the motivation of my sports editor in denying me the right and journalistic freedom to write about what had happened to me.

It is something I would have liked to have discussed with him. Unfortunately, shortly after, he was sacked and the police called in to investigate his involvement in a £300,000 fraud.

There may be some who believe much of the reporting at the time of what did and did not happen in Manchester, which is now being repeated by people who were not there, is a bit of a fraud too.

MILLER and LLOYDS

2010-08-25T10:53:00.000+01:00

TWO stories concerning cash and Rangers, which have emerged in the last few days, just do not seem to add up.

But, then again, very little of the monetary matters involving Rangers, and those bankers at Lloyds, has seemed to me to tally in the last year.

The first thing to surface was the UEFA annoucement of just how well Rangers had been rewarded for their participation in last season's Champions League. The Ibrox coffers have welcomed almost £14m

And those figures were only what UEFA gave to Rangers, and made no mention of what the club may have made through gate receipts, corporate hospitality and other bits and pieces at the three home matches last season.

The other tale which is being played out at the moment ,concerns Kenny Miller and what Rangers have offered him by way of an extension to keep him at Ibrox beyond the end of his current deal, which expires at the end of this season.

Those with the inside track at Ibrox say - and I believe them - that Miller is being asked to take a wage cut, which hardly seems the way to reward a striker who had his highest ever season's goal tally last time out.

Which brings us back to those bankers at Lloyds. And to Walter Smith's assertion it is those bankers who are running Rangers. Which leads many people to suspect they may still be keeping a tight hold of the purse strings and preventing Rangers making the sort of offer to Miller they would wish to.

Such things will always be shrouded in mystery, as any approach to the bank for information would be met with the stonewall of ''customer confidentiality.''

Rangers though, as the customer, have the right to waive such protection and to come clean about just what degree of influence Lloyds may or may not have. The club's Annual General Meeting would be the correct place to make such a statement.

There may also be a case for the Rangers Trust to approach the Lloyds Shareholders' Association in order that when the bank, which is 40 per cent owner by the British taxpayer, holds its AGM ,questions may be asked from the floor, and names named.

If, as so many media outlets tell us, Rangers are cash-strapped, then where is all of their income going? And surely it makes sense for Lloyds to reduce the club's debts in stages? After all, that £14m of UEFA money will be followed by even more - perhaps as much as £16m - for participation in this season's Champions League.

Therefore there can surely be no suggestion that, as a business, Rangers face the immediate prospect of their income drying up.

So, just who is calling the shots for Lloyds as far as Rangers are concerned? For, while Donald Muir is seen as the man who sits on the board with a watching brief for them, he appears to remain no more than a functionary.

It is inconceivable that - in world terms - such a small business as Rangers will have attracted the personal attention of Lloyds 59-year-old Montana born Chief Exectutive, Eric Daniels.

However, the bank's Chief Risk Officer, Carol Sargeant, as her title perhaps indicates, may have taken a look at Rangers to see if the debt they owe is a good risk, while the executive member of the Lloyds board, whose title is Board Representative for Scotland, 58-year-old Archie G Kane, must be a man with an intimate knowledge of Scotland's businesses - Rangers included - and be in a position to give his advice.

There are questions though as to what role another senior man at Lloyds, whose name is not so readily available, David McEwan, has played, or does play. Whether or not he took a hard line at one stage is a matter for debate. Another name which has stayed underneath the radar is Ian Cruickshanks.

Whatever the level of Rangers debt to Lloyds is when revealed in the soon to be published Ibrox accounts, it is certain to be less than it was last year.

The repayment already made, plus the interests payments on the outstanding debt, also made by Rangers to the bankers, has contributed to Lloyds making a profit in the first half of this year of £1.6BILLION, with expert analysts forcecasting an annual profit of £4BILLION, plus the accumulation of a massive cash pile of around £10BILLION by 2012.

All of which puts the piddling £20 million or so owed to Lloyds by Rangers into sharp contrast, and makes me wonder why nobody else has had the wit to link the week's two cash stories concerning Rangers. And to do a little research into the bankers who, according the Rangers manager, are running the club.

GENTLEMEN PLEASE!

2010-08-24T20:32:00.000+01:00

WHEN I lanuched this blog a couple of weeks ago, one of the things I looked forward to was hearing from you.

And, if you recall, after asking you to post your comments, I made a plea for good behaviour. For reasoned remarks. For views untainted by blind bigotory.

I have never had any problem with people who don't share my own views. Jeez I've even got a buddy who, at best ,could be described as an anarchist. And a few pals, who claim to be music lovers, but who are into that pathetic three chord trick called rock 'n roll. And me an old jazzer.

But what I find hard to tolerate is intolerance. If you see what I mean. Unfortunately there have been a few comments posted which fall well short of heeding the advice I mentioned, which my old Grandad once gave me....

KEEP THE PARTY CLEAN!

Now I know not everybody thinks Jim Baxter was the best player who ever played for Rangers and Scotland.

And there are many out there who have failed to favour my long running campaign for Billy McNeill to be knighted.

What I do know though is this..... it would be a queer old world if we were all the same. If we all believed in the same things, liked the same players and listened to the same music.

In fact, if there is anybody out there who agrees with everything I write, then allow me to advise them to see a doctor. Don't delay!

So keep on sending me your comments. But maybe those of a green and white persausion can accept there have been some pretty good players who have worn the Rangers jersey, while, those on the other side of the great divide can acknowledge there have been a few good 'uns in green and white.

Gentlemen .....and ladies, do not devalue by ill disciplined ranting or intemperate language, any points you may wish to make, either in favour of what I have written, or in taking me to task.

However, when it comes to the matter of Jim Baxter being the greatest player ever for Rangers and Scotland, it isn't worth anyone's time putting forward a contrary view. I'm not listening.

McGREGOR and LAFFERTY

2010-08-23T16:39:00.000+01:00

IT was only a matter of minutes after Allan McGregor's attempt at feigning injury that my phone blipped with a message from an old Maryhill mate who was watching the action in his home deep in the heart of the Home Counties.

His take on the incident was summed up in three words - McGregor an embarrassment - and after I watched what happened again a few times again, it is a view with which surely nobody could disagree.

What the Rangers goalkeeper did was even harder to understand given the unfavourable publicity and two match ban which came Kyle Lafferty's way following a similar display by him, which resulted in Charlie Mulgrew, then of Aberdeen, being sent off.

McGregor has been luckier than Lafferty in that the referee dealt with his action at the time, by way of a yellow card, therefore no further punlishment is possible under football's laws.

Returning to Lafferty, and the Northern Irishman has been a hate figure, subjected to continual abuse from opposition supporters as a direct result of what he did.

Maybe McGregor, who has had more than his fair share of some vile abuse because of some of his off the field exploits - real and imagined - actually thrives on being in such a harsh spotlight and didn't mind giving ammunition for more, which he soon got from angry Hibs fans. And who could blame them?

That is a pity, for McGregor is a fine goalkeeper, the best to have provided the last line at Ibrox since Andy Goram was in his pomp, and the save he made in the first half was from the top drawer.

As for Lafferty? Well on the opening day of the season he impressed against Kilmarnock and I remarked that there appeared to be a new maturity and discipline about his play. No more lunatic lunges, dodgy diving or petted-lip petulance.

He also appeared to have learned how to move the ball in a tight situation to create both the angle and space to deliver telling crosses.

Within minutes of the start on Sunday I suspected he was falling back to his bad old ways as he tried to take on two defenders, when a pass was preferable, and lost possession.

Therefore I was hardly surprised when, as half time approached, Lafferty launched an unnecessary and reckless looking tackle which prompted Hibs' Kevin McGuire to thump the ball off him, in turn leading to the Rangers man retaliating and both being sent off.

It was interesting to hear Walter Smith's take on Lafferty's involvement, saying that the player must learn from mistakes and that it something he will have to look at. He must, according the Rangers manager, adjust and discipline himself better than he has in the past.

Seasoned observers of the veteran boss feel that is Smith-speak for a dressing down for his player, and maybe even further than Smith has ever ventured in public by way of critical comment about a Rangers player.

If Lafferty can summon enough nous to ponder on what Smith said, take note of it and change - to produce what he did against Kilmarnock and not against Hibs - then there is a player in there who can be of good service to Rangers and light up all of Scottish football with a rare talent.

If not , he is a liability to a club which is operating this season with the smallest squad in its recent history. Had McBride not been sent off - and with Iain Brines in charge it can be hard to predict what will happen - Rangers would have been seriously disadvantaged and may not have won.

McGregor and Lafferty should also remember there are plenty of people out there - row upon row of them in the ranks of the media, many of whom were in the Easter Road press box - who just cannot wait to knife Rangers.

Therefore, on a morning when the papers should have been full of good things about a 3-0 Rangers win over Hibernian in Edinburgh, newspapers - as was proper in a news evaluation sense - plastered headlines about the behaviour of the two Ibrox men, with McGregor, again quite correctly, singled out for the lion's share of bad publicity.

Mentions of a superb hat trick from the always admirable Kenny Miller - a player who I have admired since first seeing him in a Hibs jersey - were pushed down the page.

As was a proper appreciation of Vladimir Weiss, whose contribution after coming on as a substitute looked to have solved what Smith referred to as the search he has conducted for almost four years for a real and natural touchline operator.

There were other plus points too, namely the way James Beattie so intelligently and deftly set up Miller's opening strike, and the stronger Steve Davis grew in his central midfield role as the game went on, culminating in his peach of a pass for Miller to complete his hat trick

Beattie looks as though he is another month away from reaching full match fitness, and when he adds a wee edge to it to compliment his astute football brain and neat touches, Rangers supporters can expect him to make a growing contribution.

Whether or not Lafferty also makes a contribution depends on his attitude to what Smith has said he must do, though I would not be in the least surprised if Rangers decided he has been given as many chances to mend his ways as is possible, leaving him with a lifetime to regret not making the most of fulfiling his boyhood dream of playing for Rangers.

........And there's more

I couldn't help but being a bit surprised at a paragrah in Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph about Liverpool agreeing a £25,000 deal to take Portuguese striker, Iaia Embarlo to Anfield from Oldham. Embarlo is just 14-years-old. They'll be putting the weans up chimneys next.

JIMMY REID and MARTIN O'NEIIL

2010-08-21T12:30:00.000+01:00

AT first glance it is far from obvious what the link is between the late Jimmy Reid and former Celtic manager Martin O'Neill.

However, both have been lionised and mythologised to such an extent they could almost be placed in the same category as Camelot and the Loch Ness Monster.

In commenting on Reid I will be forced to break an instruction handed to me more years ago than I care to remember by my old Presbyterian granny, who told me never to speak ill of the dead.

But it is not as much a case of directing ill will at the memory of the old Communist Red Clydeside firebrand, as putting him into the sort of context which has been missing from media coverage of his death and funeral.

First, the absurd notion that his 1972 speech, on being installed as Rector of Glasgow University, was the greatest since Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

The subject of Reid's speech was freedom, at a time when he was a member of the Communist Party, and when memories were fresh of how the tanks of the Communist Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics had rolled into Prague to crush any notion of freedom there.

Placing what Reid said ahead of any number of Winston Churchill's calls to arms, in real rallying cries for freedom, is even more utterly absurd than comparing his speech to what old Abe said so succinctly.

And then there were those eulogies about Reid the journalist, in which the writers appeared to be suffering from selective amnesia, failing to mention what many in the old inky trade at the time though actually defined Reid.

It was when ,at the height of Margaret Thatcher's power, Reid joined the then hard line Thatcherite Sun as a £25,000-a-year columinst - nearly £100,000 at today's values.

Of course, politcally, Jimmy Reid had a coat of many colours. After standing as a Communist and failing to be elected he moved to the right and joined the Labour Party, but still could not get elected, before finally ending up as a member of the Scottish National Party.

Watching television coverage of his funeral - a humanist service - I was reminded of another such service I attended three years ago.

It was for a journalist I had known since we were both 17, and who was a drinking buddy of the old Red Clydeside firebrand, Evening Times sportswriter, Alan Davidson.

Reid spoke, and his lecturing tone about the evils of drink offended many, myself included. We all knew big Alan took a good bucket, but his funeral service, with his grieving family sitting in the front row, was hardly the time and place to talk about it.

Fortunately for Reid's own grieving family, none of the oratory at his funeral alluded to the fact he too could lower more than was good for him, and, having spent many a night in the same company as him, I can vouch for that.

And so to the Blessed, a man I must confess I grew to like very much when he was in Glasgow, and who always treated me with courtesy and respect.

Let there be no doubt, O'Neill was a fantastically successful Celtic manager, but the depth to which the club had sunk by the summer of 2000 when he arrived, has perhaps coloured and distorted the perspective of what he achieved.

First, there is the claim that when O'Neill was manager, Celtic dominated Scottish football. It's true, in his five seasons in charge, Celtic won the title three times. Rangers triumphed twice, both championships won with Alex McLeish in charge.

It is also true he became the first Celtic manager since Jock Stein to win the Treble, achieved in his first campaign. But Rangers too managed to eclispse their rivals completely, and the 2003 Treble collected by McLeish came in direct opposition to O'Neill.

McLeish also won the first two trophies realistically available to him after he took over at Ibrox in December 2001, the League Cup and the Scottish Cup, beating O'Neill's Celtic in the semi final and final of the tournaments.

None of which give O'Neill's Celtic any sane claim to domination during that period. It is a fact that in his five years in charge O'Neill won seven trophies, exactly the same total achieved by McLeish in the shorter time of four and a half years.

In fact O'Neill's record as a Celtic manager does not stand comparision with his successor, Gordon Strachan who, on the sort of meagre budget restrictions O'Neill never had to operate under, and without anything like the same day to day control of the club the Ulsterman enjoyed, won three titles in four seasons.

There was also the significant matter of Strachan's Celtic qualifying for the last 16 of the Champions League twice, a feat O'Neill, for all his big spending, could not manage even once.

Returning to Reid, and many of the people I have spoken to who were on the inside of the trade union movement during the time when he fronted the UCS work-in , were of the view that the real power belonged to the man who was the architect of the victory, Jimmy Airlie.

I once met Airlie socially and was impressed by his quiet authority, utter lack of ego and ability to listen to others.

Airlie gave no hint as to whether he resented the way his contribution had been overshadowed Reid's celebrity, and the cash rewards which came with it, just as Strachan has never spoken of the lack of credit and respect he received from Celtic supporters for the greater success he gave them, compared to the deification of O'Neill.

Camelot and Loch Ness put together can just about match the myths attached to Reid and O'Neill.

ENDS

GORDON SMITH

2010-08-19T16:15:00.000+01:00

IT was great to bump into Gordon Smith in the media room at Ibrox on the opening day of the season.

He was at the match, having dug out his old broadcaster's hat, to resume his duties for the BBC Scotland team covering the Rangers-Kilmarnock game.

Of course it will be a plus factor for those who tune into the Beeb - and who would want to listen to any other station? - as Smudger's insight and forthright views are always worth listening too...even when you disagree with them ,as I often have.

However, there is a degree of disappointment in seeing him back on the media gallery as opposed to the more comfortable seats in the directors' box, where he perched during his all too brief spell as the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association.

It was a source of some mystery to me why so many of my press colleagues took against him from the moment his appointment was announced.

One daily newspaper reporter even shook his head in disbelief when he broke the news to me inside a ground on the outskirts of Vienna, where we were to watch a Scotland side, managed by Alex McLeish, take on Austria in a friendly.

For years we hacks - and some wee hacks too - had been screaming for a football man to be installed as the SFA supremo, and those shrieks were at their loudest during the disastrous tenure of David Taylor.

Yet, as soon as a guy who played at the top level, who had coaching experience at the top level, who operated as an agent for top players, and who knew how the media worked through his time on BBC radio and television, got the job there were howls of derision.

My reaction was one of both welcome and a guarded optimism, tempered by a worry that Smith's background would work against him being accepted in some quarters.

As part of his background was a spell, at Rangers, during a playing career which saw him appear for, among others, Kilmarnock, Manchester City and Brighton, the source of of any discontent about him should not be hard to work out.

But in all the dealings I have had with the man, I have always been impressed by the depth of his knowledge and understanding of the game, and even more to the point, of human nature, and his utter even handed approach.

It was not long though until whispering campaigns started by shady people who operate in the shadows, and to be fair, Smith did himself less than justice with some of his public statements.

The appointment of George Burley to succeed McLeish, was hardly his finest hour, and the press conference to announce Burley's appointment turned into a farce when president George Peat and Smith highjacked it and got into an unseemly verbal brawl with the media.

Burley looked bewildered, though we were soon to discover that was a common state of mind for him, especially when Scotland were playing.

But he was not the first - nor will he be the last - SFA chief executive involved in appointing the wrong man as Scotland manager.

Unlike Taylor before him with Berti Vogts through, Smith was instrumental in removing Burley before he could do as much damage to Scotland's reputation as the German had managed.

It was after that though that Smith started to live on borrowed time, and when president Peat forced through the appointment of Craig Levein early this year, those of us in the know held our breath for a departure we knew must come soon.

Smith had been Peat's favoured man for the chief executive job, and when the president insisted on Levein taking over the Scotland job - a decision which I continue to fail to see the logic of - - the former Dundee United manager soon became the president's favoured ''son'' at Hampden.

The bad blood which existed between Smith and Levein has been well enough chronicled, and despite the pipe of peace they smoked in public, most observers agreed they could find it hard to work together.

Not for a moment do I believe that Levein had anything to do with Smith's departure, as even before the new national team boss entered Hampden, there were rumours a whispering campaign against the chief executive at a high level, from some who it was believed might have resented his background as a former Rangers player.

Though I have no evidence to suggest there was ever any such tittle tattle to to try to undermine former Celtic chairman Jack McGinn's time as president of the SFA, a time which was actually extended by a year beyond the normal occupancy.

No doubt any behind the scenes politicising in the Hampden corridors of power, which may have gone on in the late winter and early spring months of this year, will become public some day. Some day soon, I hope.

Until then, those who tune into BBC Radio Scotland will once again be given a splendid insight into what's going on by Smith.

The press box may not be as comfortable as the directors' box, but it's a lot more fun. And Gordon will also benefit from the bonus of meeting a better class of people there.

MURRAY'S RETURN?

2010-08-18T14:45:00.000+01:00

SIR DAVID MURRAY could well be poised to make a dramatic return to the chairmanship of Rangers for a second time.

That is one conclusion which may be drawn from the revelation from Portsmouth that it is with Murray they have been negotiating over Rangers attempts to sign striker Tommy Smith.

Yet, amazingly this bombshell news was buried away, halfway down a story in Tuesday's Daily Mail, rather than given the sort of prominence an old newshound such as myself would have made sure it had.

However, even these ageing old eyes are still sharp enough to spot something which is newsworthy - one definition of which is something which is not already known.

The story came from Portsmouth administrator Andrew Andronikou, and the fact that he is the administrator, and not someone usually involved in football may explain his straight talking and the candid nature of what he said, as opposed to much of the double talk which forms a part of the game at managerial and boardroom level.

For those of you who missed the story what Andronikou said was this: ''We have agreed a fee with David Murray at Rangers.''

And those few words is what made the story newsworthy, for, as far as everyone has been aware, despite remaining as the owner of the club, since resigning as chairman and from the board a year ago, Murray no longer has any participation in the day-to-day running of Rangers.

Certainly when manager Walter Smith made the declaration of his honestly held view last season, that Rangers were being run by Lloyds Bank, Murray's influence had not only waned, but actually disappeared.

That though came at a time when he had put Rangers on the open-to-offers list and was actively seeking a buyer for the club.

It can surely be no conincidence the news from Portsmouth that it is Murray was has agreed the fee Rangers will pay for Smith, comes at a time when it was also revealed the club remain on the open-to-offers list, despite Murray's statement last month that he no longer wanted to sell up.

Of course all of this could be nothing more than a coincidence.

Or it could be the straws in the wind which indicate that Murray may be tempted to take over the Rangers reins again, just as he did a few years ago when, after a period during which he remained on the board, but stood down from the chairmanship, he returned to the top.

Whether or not Lloyds Bank have, or will, play any part in what the make up of the Rangers board has or will be, is something else which is unclear.

One thing though which will happen should Murray return, is that the power of chief executive Martin Bain will diminish. There was a time when I would have agreed to that being a good thing. Not now!

In fact I believe Bain's greater freedom to make decisions and his increased power since Murray left the board and the chair was filled by Alistair Johnston, who spends the overwhelming majority of his time in America, has been an extremely good thing for Rangers.

Those in the know tell me many of Bain's better ideas, plus his desire to publicly defend Rangers from many of the outrageous slurs perpetrated against the club by many in the media - and by rival football organizations - were thwarted by Murray.

Certainly those close to Smith say the manager has absolute faith in Bain and, indeed, his presence as chief executive may even have played a part in Smith deciding to stay on for another season in charge.

Last year the club's AGM was not held until the unusually late month of November. It will be worth keeping a close eye on when the annual audited accounts are finally published, and when they are put before the shareholders for approval.

For the events immediately before the publication of the accounts, and in the period leading up to the AGM, could well provide more straws in the wind. Hints which can help observers determine whether or not Murray will return to the Ibrox board as chairman.

In alerting everyone, by floating that first straw, Portsmouth administrator Andrew Andronikou, has no doubt sparked off a debate.

Or at least his comments will do, now that I have realised the full import of his words and brought them to the attention of a wider audience.

ENDS

McGEADY

2010-08-17T15:54:00.000+01:00

AIDEN McGEADY'S spew of bile over the dear green place which is my native city, was as predictable as it was preposterous and pathetic.

According to the Moscow bound former Celtic player, he had to get away from Glasgow because he was a hate figure who had been subjected to death threats.

Yet, according to one senior source of mine within Strathclyde Police HQ ,there is no record of McGeady ever making a complaint to them, or of them ever investigating any such serious threat against him.

He also says he was fed up with Glasgow and wanted to leave, and that it was nothing against Celtic, but Glasgow was the problem.

However, it is when he delves into murky waters that the situation becomes - as you might expect - muddied.
For he claims some fans hate everything Celtic stand for, and - and I quote McGeady directly - ''Everything I stand for as an Irish Catholic, playing for Celtic.''

He went on to mention some of the places where he says the abuse is at its highest, these being, Ibrox, Tynecastle, Motherwell and Falkirk.

But it is the fact he mentions what Celtic stand for, and what he, as an Irish Catholic stands for, which has me baffled.

After all Celtic, as their Mission Statement, makes clear, hold no truck with any sort of discrimination. Does McGeady think Celtic stand for Irish Cathlolics? It will be interesting to see whether or not chairman John Reid and chief executive Peter Lawwell move quickly to dis-associate Celtic with their former player's inflamatory remarks.

I also wonder just what the reader who took offence at my light hearted reference to my granny being a Presbyterian, thinks of McGeady citing religion in such a way.

Funnily enough in the last quarter of a century I have never been aware of a greater intensity of abuse directed at Celtic players at Ibrox, Tynecastle, Motherwell and Falkirk than that hurled at Rangers players at Parkhead and the homes of those other three clubs.

Though when Rangers visit Easter Road the vilification from the Hibernian supporters usually exceeds all they have to suffer elsewhere, with the exception of the east end of Glasgow.

Not for a moment do I doubt that McGeady has met some uncouth and unpleasant types - whether they be Rangers fans, who abuse him because he played for Celtic, or members of the Tartan Army, who give him stick for turning his back on the land of his birth, and electing to play for a foreign country.

In this respect I sympathise with him. Just as I sympathised with Nacho Novo when the death threats he received were of a serious enough nature for him to call in the constabulary.

There was also the gutter chant from Celtic hordes directed at the Spanish player, which went :''I hope you die in your sleep Nacho Novo, hope you die in your sleep, I pray, Hope you die in your sleep Nacho Novo, with a bullet from the IRA.''

LOVELY!

Then there was DeMarcus Beasley, an Afro-American from the south side of Chicago - which as Leroy Brown tells us is the meanest part of town - who had his car firebombed, while Allan McGregor's motor was trashed too.

Mo Johnston - remember him? - was at such a risk from Celtic fans he had to have bodyguards, and go and live in Edinburgh. That's some price for any Keelie to have to pay.

On the park too it is Rangers players who have been more in the Old Firm hate firing line. Witness what happened in front of 60,000 people and a television audience of a couple of million to then Rangers captain, Fernando Ricksen when his face was cut and needed stitching after being smacked by a missile hurled from the Parkhead stands.

More than five years on and the culprit remains at large, perhaps even sitting in the same seat at Parkhead. Maybe the guilty man or woman is the same thug whose aim was good enough to fell referee Hugh Dallas at the Celtic shame game in 1999.

Put alongside all of that, the abuse McGeady was subjected to from the stands was pretty small beer, while what he may or may not have suffered on the street - and I don't doubt he had some pretty hairy moments -pales into insignificance compared to what at least three Rangers players have had to put up with on and off the park in the last couple of years.

We have certainly moved a long way since the 1960s when Jim Baxter could you out on the toot in safety with Paddy Crerand, Mike Jackson and Billy McNeill.

Or since the late 80s and early 90s when I shared many a bottle of bubbly with Paul Elliott, Jackie Dziekanowski, Paul McStay, Ally McCoist, Stuart McCall and Dale Gordon in the upstairs piano bar in Victorias.

But back to McGeady. And in the arena where he should be judged - football - Celtic won't miss him. And if you don't want to take my word for it, then how about verdict of Giovanni Trapattoni?

The veteran and highly decorated Italian coach, now in charge of the Republic of Ireland ,no longer sees McGeady as a first choice. With no goals in McGeady's more than half a century of international appearances, you can see where Trapattoni is coming from.

ENDS

CELTIC CASH CRISIS

2010-08-16T15:14:00.000+01:00

THE damage Rangers have done to Celtic by winning the last two titles became obvious today when the Parkhead accounts were published.

And while the near £6m of debt which was announced is nowhere as serious as the level of money owed by Rangers, it shows how important this season's championship will be for the future of both sides of the Old Firm.

Chairman, John Reid may have been - as the BBC described him - bullish about the loss, but it's well worth remembering a similar description of Sir David Murray's attitude during the years when Rangers were slipping towards their present predicament.

The voyage back is long and hard, and while the direct entry to the riches of the Champions League, achieved by Rangers last season and again this year, has gone a long way towards steadying the ship at Ibrox, there are still stormy seas to navigate.

But, however choppy the waters, it is a course which will not be open to the team which finishes at the top of the table next spring. Next year the champions will have to pre-qualify, making it harder to come out of the squall and dock in a safe haven.

Therefore Celtic, although their debt is smaller than that which burdened Rangers two years ago, are not in as happy a position as the champions were even then. For at that time the solution was simply to win the next two titles, despite cutting costs, and the Champions League money would ride to the rescue.

For Celtic, even winning the SPL this time out does not guarantee those riches, and that presents a problem, especially at a time when there is a hint of them adopting Murray's old discredited and disastrous mantra of slapping a tenner on the table for every fiver the other half of the Old Firm spends.

Finishing as runners up, however is unthinkable as that means having to go through the two prequalfying rounds which stalled Celtic's progress this summer. The odds on this season's champions making it into Europe's blue riband tournament will be long enough, let alone what they will be like for the runners-up making it through.

Celtic's plight can be traced back to 14 months ago when chairman Reid and chief executive Peter Lawwell took what proved to be the financially crippling decision to employ Tony Mowbray as the successor to Gordon Strachan.

Though there are many who believe the disgraceful attitude of a large - majority? - of Celtic supporters towards Strachan, which led to the vacancy being created in the first place, is at the root of Celtic's current plight. That veteran Parkhead watcher - writer and broadcaster Hugh Keevins - hit the nail on the head with his view that Strachan would never be accepted by the faithful, as he lacked Celtic DNA.

Strachan was often hounded by the crowd at Parkhead ,and even more so on the road, where the extreme and hard line element of the Celtic support is more vocally identifiable.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions ,and those Celtic fans who voiced their dis-approval of Strachan clearly thought their intent was for the good of Celtic .

However, what they have learned about is the law of unintended consequences. Perhaps if Strachan had felt more loved by Celtic supporters he may have stayed on after Rangers won the title in 2009, following his three in a row successes.

Had he done so, there would have been no Mowbray, and none of the extra costs incurred to unseat him, which have had such a devastating effect on Celtic's financial situation.

Or, as my old Presbyterian granny used to warn....beware of what you wish for!

........AND THERE'S MORE

POOR old Craig Levein. As though the tanking Scotland got in Sweden wasn't bad enough, the story about the scribbles on a piece of paper found in the team's dressing room, have held him and his backroom staff up to ridicule.

The Swedes, having undone Levein's Scotland with such ease, are now having a good old fashioned belly laugh at the national team's preparation.

However, it was something which happened back in Scotland the morning after the match which should be of even greater cause for concern for those who have the good of the Scotland team close to their heart.

Firstly, Levein chose to de-brief the Sunday newspaper journalists at the luxury country hotel where he stayed after the Scotland flight landed at Glasgow airport in the wee small hours.

Now I have been involved in similar briefings dating back to when Jock Stein was in charge, and including Andy Roxburgh, Craig Brown, Berti Vogts, Walter Smith, Alex McLeish and George Burley, and each time they held court it was on Scottish Football Association premises.

It was though, what Levein was reported as having said which was worrying, as he tried to explain away a defeat which carried much of the same stigma attached to the beatings in Wales under Vogts and Burley, and in Norway when Burley was in charge.

According to Levein, he was the least concerned of all about the defeat and its nature, with him going on to describe the 3-0 humiliation visited on his Scotland side as being akin to a club losing a pre season friendly.

If I may be so bold as to correct him. It is far from that. International friendly games are included in the complicated points structure put together by FIFA which determines Scotland's place in the world rankings, which in turn is included in the calculations of seeding when qualification for World Cup and European Championships come around.

It is defeats, such as the many suffered under Vogts, which saw a Scotland side ranked in the top 20 and seeded 2nd when he inherited it from Brown, slither to nearly 80th and nosedive to fourth seeds. Which is why we found ourselves in a section which included then World Champions, Italy, beaten finalists France, and quarter finalists Ukraine.

Therefore the outcome of friendlies do not merely matter. They are vital for Scottish chances of ever reaching the finals of a major tournament again. Which is why the shrewd Smith took so few. Maybe if Levein had taken the trouble of going to work last Thursday, somebody at the SFA would have made that point to him ahead of his meeting with the Press, and saved him from making a similar verbal blunder to the one somebody on his backroomn staff committed to paper in Sweden.

ENDS

NEW SEASON

2010-08-13T15:26:00.000+01:00

THE new season starts this weekend, and not a moment too soon. And Leggoland is back too. And not a moment too soon either.
It's the best part of a year and a half since Trinity Mirror Newspapers - owners also of the Daily Record, Sunday Mail, Daily and Sunday Mirror - pulled the plug on their sports coverage of Scottish football in the People.
There may be a few of you out there who followed my weekly Leggoland column for the best pasrt of 12 years in the People.
Certainly the 30 per cent drop in the circulation of the ailing paper in Scotland - the largest plunge if sales of any paper north of the border - since they axed Leggoland suggests there were plenty of folk out there who only bought the otherwise sad old rag for my column.
But that's the past. This is the present and the future. The way ahead, and the way more and more of you will be getting you news and views.
So, even though I've been around for just about as long as sin itself - more than 46 years in the news business - I'm still young enough to welcome this new journalism, and to embrace it.
However, although I will keep you all posted about what's going on behind the scenes in the weird and wonderful of Scottish newspapers, television and radio, it's football which will be the main focus for this column.
Or, as I must get used to calling it in the world of the web, this blog!
So right away let's turn our attention to the coming campaign, which I reckon will be as interesting as any in history, as Walter Smith seeks to achieve what he failed to 13 years ago, and finish his time at Ibrox by winning the title, while Neil Lennon attempts to repeat the feat of Wim Jansen, and win the flag in his first season in charge at Parkhead, bringing the Rangers juggernaut to a shuddering halt.
Of course to many it appears that Smith and Rangers are not just facing billionaire owner Dermot Desmond and chairman John Reid and his establishment cronies, but also the bankers of Lloyds. Bankers, I say, bankers.
Lloyds, and just who the men behind the decisions which are handcuffing Rangers, will be the subject of a blog in the very near future.
Don't miss it when I name names. Bankers!
For the moment, and with the transfer window still open for another fortnight, it is hard to separate the Old Firm and much will hinge on how rookie manager Lennon copes with the weight of the stresses, strains and expectations of a fanatical support, especially now that Martin O'Neill is out of work.
There is also the formidable nature of the man Lennon is up against, Smith, whose shrewd eye will be carefully cast on Lennon, watching for any moment of weakness, and vulnerability, or sign that he is wilting under the strain.
It is the experience of Smith and his calm rationale which is the most vital thing for Rangers as they attempt to make it three in a row - one of the hardest feats in Scottish football - as history testifies.
For instance, it's well known that when Gordon Strachan achieved what Martin O'Neill could not, it was the first time Celtic had managed it since Jock Stein during the Parkhead nine-in-a-row era.
What is possibly not as well known is that when Rangers hit title number three during the Ibrox nine-in-a-row run, it was the first time Rangers had managed it since the 1930s when Bill Struth ruled the roost.
Therefore, should Smith manage it he will be unique, as the only man to do it on two entirely separate occasions.
Do I think Smith and Rangers will do it? Just three weeks ago my reply would have been an emphatic NO! At that time Celtic were signing players as Rangers sold-sold-sold. But now there are signs that Smith will be able to wheel and deal.
I still believe the players who have arrived at Parkhead will strengthen Celtic from what they were last season when Rangers won the title by six points.
It may take Celtic a little time to settle and gell, and if Rangers can take advantage in that period, and build a lead, plus making the right sort of signings, things could get very interesting - and that's when we will all see just what kind of manager Lennon is.
So - and it's sore on the bum up here on the fence - I think I will reserve judgement on just who to tip for the title until the transfer window closes at the end of the month.
But stay with me and let me have your comments on my news and views. But - and please folks take note - no rambling rants. No bad language and NO BIGOTRY. As my old grandad used to say - keep the party clean.
.............AND THERE'S MORE.......
GOOD news and bad news on the television beat for the season ahead.
First, its good to hear that Sky have promoted one of the best broadcasters in Scotland, David Tanner, from trackside interviews when there's live Scottish football on the box.
Instead, David will be in the studio as the anchor, a job I am sure he will quckly grow into, and one he richly reserves.
David cut his broadcasting teeth at Radio Clyde, and then STV, at a time when both organisations were less inclined to lean in a Parkhead direction than they do now.
The bad news? Well, Peter Martin Maguire, who quit the increasingly marginalised looking Radio Clyde, will take over the trackside interviewing dutiies on Sky from the promoted Tanner.
One of Martin Maguire's last outings on Clyde was on general election night when he and the bumpitious and bumbling Graham Spiers got into trouble for speculating on air about the voting intentions of Neil Lennon and Walter Smith while the polls were still open.
Which as any fule knows, is against the law, and led to Clyde warning both Martin Maguire and Spiers after OFCOM, the broadcasting watchdog censured the radio station.
Martin Maguire and Spiers actually went as far as to endorse Labour, with Spiers saying he had voted for the Kirkcaldy minister's son.
So, not only did the ailing Times' football writer not know the law, he also appeared to be unaware of how our parliamentary democracy works.
For, as he lives in Aryshire, his vote would be for whoever stood in his local constituency, and not for someone who was standing in a constituency in Fife.
Just another example of why the Times, at least in Scotland, has lost it's reputation of being the paper of record since Spiers was edged out at the Herald and joined them.

That's all for now, but keep an eye on this site for all the latest.