One Year on and Rangers fans still can’t handle the truth!

It seems that a few individuals cannot handle folk with opinions that differ from their own. They also cannot handle facts when confronted by clear-as-day evidence. One year on from Rangers’ descent into the biggest corporate sporting scandal in British Football and nothing seems to have changed in the mindset of the usual suspects within the Rangers support.

In November 2010, Craig Whyte came on the Rangers scene as he was outed as the only interested party in buying Rangers Football Club from Sir David Murray, then Daily Record Sports editor James Traynor published an exclusive: Scots billionaire Craig Whyte set to buy Rangers for £30m.

Traynor is now Rangers’ Director of Communications, tasked with ‘controlling the media’ according to Charles Green at a recent fan’s Q&A in Sydney, Australia. The same former journalist-turned blogger who wrote ‘Rangers FC as we know them are dead. It’s all over’.

Traynor’s position as a credible journalist during his days at the Daily Record took an even bigger hit yesterday, when Channel Four Senior Correspondent Alex Thomson published an article: Rangers: succulent lamb on the rack?

In his article, Thomson labelled Traynor as one example of the curious Glasgow concept of “succulent lamb” journalism. The man who was described by one fellow Rangers blogger as ‘from a tradition of journalism which now belongs to ‘bygone days of yore’ and he would be ‘checking and re-checking the facts, pouring over all the documents and taking nothing at face value’ has seen email conversations between him and Craig Whyte published, which painted the picture of Traynor, the Sports editor, seeing editorial and copy approval from Craig Whyte.

While the likes of James Traynor and another succulent lambists were awaiting copy approval from the billionaire with wealth off the radar, a few gallant pioneers delved into the murky waters that was Craig Whyte’s business background.

In November 2010, I wrote an article entitled ‘The end is nigh for Rangers ongoing takeover saga or is it?’. WHich looked into Whyte’s background – to my knowledge one of the first, if not the first, to look indepth into his background. Away from the mainstream, including Traynor, churning out of Whyte’s press releases.

The article saw plenty of commentary from the Rangers fans, denouncing me as a troll, anti-Rangers and everything else under the sun. News reached the corridors of power within Whyte HQ by March 2011, I received an email from lawyers Carter Ruck threatening legal action over the article.

It read: “We represent the UK businessmen Mr Craig Whyte who has instructed us in to untrue and defamatory allegations being published about him in an article on the Scotzine website hosted by UK Webhosting Ltd entitled “The end is nigh for Rangers ongoing takeover saga or is it?”.

“It is not the purpose of this letter to detail all the false allegations, lies and innuendos in this article, which threatens considerable harm to our clients reputation. However, as the host of this content, UK Webhosting Ltd is hereby placed on notice pursuant to Section 1 of the Defamation Act 1996…

“In the circumstances we request UK Webhosting Ltd to cease forthwith hosting the above material and confirm to us when this has taken place. If UK Webhosting Ltd continues to host this material, it will bear liability for it and may expect us to take further action to protect our clients reputation.”

Soon after my hosting company representative contacted me, along with the accompanying pdf from Carter Ruck, he said: “I have been asked by the server owners to have you remove the attached article. To be honest this amount’s to “remove it or be removed from the server.”

“So, you can say they are giving you a chance. It’s truly out of my hands, I have nothing to do with it, but know from the past the server folks will just delete the account.”

So under protest I removed said article from the website – albeit in a private folder on the site still. It remained dormant there until I re-published it when Scotzine moved hosts and Craig Whyte’s position at Rangers became untenable.

However, despite the initial article being pulled in March, two months later we reworked the article and updated it with new information we received, calling it Craig ‘Not So’ Whyte.

The threats of legal action stopped.

Throughout this time and thereafter we were attacked, abused and even threatened from Rangers fans who professed to love their club, the same fans who believed everything that Whyte was peddling with help from his new-found friends in the mainstream media. They failed to believe the Rangers independent commission, they rounded on those Rangers board members on the commission, they demanded Murray to sell to Whyte and they rounded on anyone who reported on Craig Whyte in a negative like – even when the articles were factual – like the two articles listed above.

From that point on, others took the lead, others with more contacts, more knowledge of business and tax issues – Rangers Tax Case blog, Paul McConville and Phil MacGiolla Bhain – to name but a few so-called internet bampotters. Both Phil and Paul contributed articles to Scotzine and to this day we still believe their contributions have been a great addition to not only our site but also to the whole Rangers financial saga – despite what some others claim and state.

What followed was further disclosures and exclusives by the likes of the Rangers Tax Case blog – their coverage earned the anonymous blogger the coveted Orwell prize. An award that spat in the face of those mainstream media journos, who rubbished, who belittled the blogger, other bloggers and labelled them internet bampots.

Throughout the Rangers financial saga, the mainstream media were second best and were following the footsteps of these bloggers that they targeted with petty and childish insults. They were embarrassed by being beaten to the biggest corporate scandal in Scottish football history, to the man who led Rangers to its death and all because they wanted to keep to the inner circle.

The one man in the mainstream media, to be the first to swim against the current, Mark Daly should be applauded. While the majority of his documentary on Whyte was already known to those internet bampots, there were still a few things he unearthed in his first documentary that was news to me and which would have rocked Ibrox to the core – if the Rangers support didn’t continue to bury their head in the sand in between coming up for air shouting obsessed, bigot, anti-Rangers, boycott!

Then there was his EBT and dual contract investigation and documentary. Mark Daly was truly the leader of mainstream coverage of the Rangers financial sage, but even Mark would admit that his work paled in comparison to the RTC blog.

The club went spiralling out of control off the pitch and on it – fortunes were just as bad. HMRC rejected a CVA and thereafter the club went into liquidation.

Charles Green issued a statement beforehand stating that if a CVA was to be rejected then the history would die and that a brand new club would be born. James Traynor also reiterated that same fact – that the history of Rangers would stay with the now defunct club and not the new club under Charles Green.

Not only are Rangers 2012 claiming the old club’s history has tupe’d over – unlike some players – Traynor and Green are also trying to rewrite their own history also. Just like Craig Whyte did by bullying and threatening legal action forcing newspapers to delete past articles on his dodgy business history, not to mention articles that were published in the last days of Whyte in the Ibrox boardroom.

The RTC blog for all its great work and exclusives failed in one respect – the eventual outcome of the Big Rangers Tax Case. While most peddled the ‘what if’ argument, others were convinced that big tax case would find in favour of HMRC and despite the rhetoric from Rangers post-decision, they didn’t know what side of the fence the case would fall on.

Rangers fans are now calling on the RTC blogger to be outed and arrested for illegally obtaining documentation – yet labelling him a liar also – bit of a contradiction really. How can he be arrested for illegally obtaining official documents if he was lying and that all the documents were lies?

However, with HMRC appealing said FTT decision, the outcome once again is up in the air. Yet Charles Green has once again told Rangers fans based in Sydney that: “HMRC are now appealing the decision against a company which is in liquidation and has no assets. They also have no chance of winning this.”

Is that not the same sort of speculation that Rangers fans rounded on, criticised and mocked the likes of RTC over?

Right or wrong, RTC secured evidence and official documents from unnamed sources. Whether they were illegally obtained or not is another issue altogether – but at the end of the day a mainstream journalist, who believing a story was in the public interest, would have gone to the same lengths also, wouldn’t they?

Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward toppled the world’s most powerful man in the guise of Richard Nixon, the President of the United States. Where are Scotland’s investigative journalists? Bernstein and Woodward have been the inspiration of student journalists worldwide, yet where is this ‘investigative’ nature within Scottish football reporting?

Churn, churn, interview, churn. Where is the digging, where is the researching, where is the calling into question statements made by club chief executives?

It was Scotzine who broke the story that Rangers peddled a lie over discussions with the Dallas Cowboys and a commercial partnership with the NFL side, it was Scotzine who broke the story that Central Coast Mariners would rebuke any offer from Rangers to become their feeder club – despite further comments this week from Green. Where are the mainstream articles on Charles Green’s travels down under? On his ludicrous commentary, baseless opinions and rabble rousing?

Can history really repeat itself twice in two years? Can the mainstream media really fall into their old habits of taking Green at face value?

It seems as though in part, history is repeating itself.

Rangers top brass making statements they cannot back up, peddling commentary to woe the Rangers fans, to get them on board and to denounce any critic and target them, even when publishing facts. Sound familiar? Craig Whyte and Charles Green fall into that statement of fact quite easily.

Speaking of denouncing critics and those who publish & quote facts, it seems that the Rangers support didn’t like the thought of Paul McConville and myself appearing on Thursday night’s BBC Sportsound programme to talk about all things Rangers on the first anniversary of their demise. Labelled ‘Rangers haters’, ‘obsessed’ and ‘bigots’ the thought of two bloggers who are not scared off by intimidation, abuse and threats was all too much to bare for some bears. A storm ensued according to the BBC Sportsound producer who had contacted me to appear on the show.

Thursday morning, I was notified by some on twitter that I was appearing on the show later than night, in fact on Monday I had told the BBC Sportsound producer – who was looking to have someone on the show that used social media and was instrumental in covering the Rangers scandal – that my coverage of the saga was miniscule compared to others and passed on Paul’s details to him to appear instead. So the news that I was appearing in the show was actually news to me.

The official stance taken by the BBC was that due to the ‘online storm’ that ensured – emails and twitter messages – The Sportsound team pulled the programme after discussions as they claimed they could not ‘have a balanced discussion on the air so we are not going to run the feature’. The reason behind the lack of balance? Rangers blogger Chris Graham – and serial hater of anyone who is outspoken about his beloved Rangers – pulled out of the show. He claimed on twitter that: “[He] was invited onto the BBC tonight [Thursday] but couldn’t appear. They then asked me to replace McConville but given other people appearing I declined.

The other people being myself and St.Johnstone fan Stuart Cosgrove, a man who Graham loves to call a ‘busted flush’ and ‘a Rangers hater’. He also says on many occasions that he would love to confront me face-to-face over my comments about him as bigot and a paranoid delusional who sees conspiracies everywhere – I await his article tomorrow explaining his decision to ‘boycott’ the BBC Sportsound hotseat and instead appear on the safe confines of the comfy sofa at Scotland Tonight on STV – where he was free from criticism, from being challenged over his past comments and tough questions which would have certainly been raised by myself and Paul. Did he back out after initially accepting the gig knowing that he would face at least one individual who wouldn’t believe or mollycoddle the latest ‘media whore’ passing himself off as the main Rangers spokesperson.

Why have STV ditched RST board member and Follow Follow head honcho Mark Dingwall? Where is the RSA representative? The RST and the RSA are the real Rangers fan representatives not a blogger with an ego the size of Ibrox.

We then had a Rangers club employee and regular Scotzine critic Andrew Dickson – once editor of the now defunct Rangers News – who, upon hearing the news earlier in the day of our appearance, tweeted: “Interesting Paul McConville has been invited on to BBC Sportsound to discuss Rangers tonight but why? May as well ask Muirhead too.. And that’s just it you see, word reaches me they HAVE invited Muirhead on as well. Who’s next? McNally? Three names?! Astonishing.”

He went on to state: “A very unbalanced guest list, Cosgrove also on. Not sure there’s any truth in the rumour it’s coming live from Baird’s though.”

Just like the serialisation of Phil MacGiolla Bhain’s book ‘Downfall’ the Rangers fans, bloggers and employee ability to intimidate, criticise and round on the media knows no bounds and the media seem to falter with little or no resistance. Why? To safeguard their business and that is why I have no issue with BBC Scotland or the guys at Sportsound in the slightest. They are protecting their interests like anyone else would.

But maybe it is time that the media, who let down their readers and the wider public, during the Craig Whyte Rangers era – until the latter stages – grab the bull by the horns and hold their ground despite the opposition and the venom aimed at them.

Valentine’s Day is a yearly event for couples to show their love. For Rangers though, it will always be remembered as the blackest day in the history of their club – ten years, 20 years, 100 years from now – generations of fans will talk about and discuss what is now being dubbed as the biggest corporate scandal in British football.

The Craig Whyte and Rangers financial saga is a warning from history that the fans must take heed for future years – but will they listen? Can they handle the truth? Past experiences show that they cannot until it slaps them in the face like a wet kipper and the same seems to be coming true in their blind adoration and following of Charles Green.

One thing is for sure – the last year has not been boring. Some stuff just writes itself!

Published on Scotzine - February 15, 2013