The Scottish Fitba Thread

Yeah that's a red card waiting to happen lol especially with 50k fans on the ref's back.

I don't think anyone really knows, tbh. Potentially another player not directly involved with the first time might have tested positive since Thursday, so he's having to isolated as a close contact.

Yeah, it has actually been pretty decent quality, which has been a rarity in recent years. Eddy missed a sitter. I felt Celtic bossed possession, but Rangers still looking very dangerous on the break.

We actually played very well in the first half, but as suspected out defensive problems ended up costing us. Simplest goal you'll ever see; high school level defending from a set piece.

Some really decent performances as well, but Christie again just woeful in this fixture. I don't think I've ever seen him play well against Rangers.

Disappointing. Their experience and solidity won it.

I thought Celtic played well enough, though some key players let the game pass them by. Not enough chances created - poor in the final third today which is surprising given recent form. It was clearly a mistake to start with Kyogo on the LHS.

The defence looked coherent all day, comfortable defending and in playing out from the back. Starfelt has looked uncomfortable at times recently but in the second half against AZ and all day today, when asked to defend he has played well. The only mistake they made really was for the goal which came as the result of slack marking and a world class delivery. Juranovic looks like a #pler too. He made a couple of unforced errors but I'd put them down to his single-footedness. McGregor exceptional in the first half, though dropped out the game as it progressed.

Christie, Turnbull and Edouard needed to offer more. Abada absent too - though he gets latitude for his age plus the fact he was the only player available in his position. Soro not good enough at the highest level and you have to worry that some other players (e.g. Ajeti etc) clearly not trusted by AP.

Rangers defended well but didn't really offer much going forward. Celtic will batter them at Celtic Park.

Dom McKay away after two months, cites personal reasons. Twitter account deleted.

INTRIGUING

Yeah, this is undoubtedly a little weird. That sort of language has the benefit of being perfectly plausible whilst being suitably vague.

No idea what to expect, really.

Dermot hired and fired him.

Until DD is gone nothing will really change in the way the club is ran.

Michael Stewart passing comment about Rangers 150 years commemorative kit video, calls it inflammatory due to the tune of Four Lads had a Dream playing in the background.

What's your take on this?

I think he's making a fool of himself, although it looks like he's played to the gallery nicely.

I don't believe Rangers are deliberately inciting with the video, simply that 4LHAD is fitting to the occasion of commemorating the founding fathers.

That being said, 4LHAD doesn't really appeal to me as a song. I don't like tunes that borrow melodies, as a rule, and the lyrics to it are standard grade level at best.

RE: the Rangers kit video

I spend quite a bit of time on the Scottish Football sub-reddit, which is admittedly mainly Rangers dominated but the atmosphere and banter there is usually far more good-spirited, self-deprecating, and wholesome than what you find in other online communities (and I include the Celtic sub-reddit in that, which is depressingly fatalist). I suspect, and I guess hope, that this is mainly down to the younger age of the posters there, who (small case size, I accept) seem largely to have moved away from the bile and outright hostility that generally dominates between Celtic and Rangers fans, Hearts and Hibs fans, Rangers and Aberdeen fans, etc.

This, unfortunately, has even put that sub-reddit into a bit of a melt down. I don't think it helps that Michael Steward was the first public figure to respond to their video launch in such a way, as he is a pariah amongst Rangers supporters, who as I understand it perceive him as having it in for the club due to his history of once failing his trial there as a youngster. Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.

I think the issue, or potential issue, here is all to do with context and what was (and was not) present in the kit launch video. Rangers fans are pointing out that the 4LHAD lyrics have been sung at Ibrox since around the time of the Maribor game. The idea is that given the nature of those lyrics and the purpose of the commemoration video, then these go perfectly hand in hand. At a surface level, that's fine.

The problem is that it is not the 4LHAD song that is present in that video: what is present is the tune/melody for the Beach Boys' Sloop John B. To modern, season-ticket, game-going Rangers fans, attending Ibrox each week, the connection between that tune and the 4LHAD lyrics that are sung to it may be obvious. But that's simply not the case to many outside the club. On the contrary, that tune, especially when sung by Rangers fans, is historically connected to the Famine Song, which is quite rightly recognized as a hate song, promoting sectarian bigotry against Irish Catholics and expressing a desire to rid them from Scotland. And, as linked above in this very thread, it's less than two months ago that social media footage of hundreds of Rangers fans marching through an underpass in Glasgow singing the Famine Song emerged, which required the Police to make multiple arrests, Rangers to issue a statement condemning the bigotry and committing to banning the culprits from attending games for life.

Had the video simply included the lyrics of 4LHAD in the background then I doubt we'd be seeing much of this criticism. But it's just the tune, which unfortunately leaves a sense of ambiguity. This is then combined with the rhetoric of Glasgow being 'their' city in the video, which harkens back to those scenes earlier in the year when a large number of their supporters trashed George Square and sang any number of problematic songs, multiple videos and posts of which were then shared online talking about how people should not forget that the city is 'theirs'. As such, I can see why charities such as Nil by Mouth have spoken out about it.

So, is this seeing sectarianism where none was intended? I guess we'll never know. I do find it somewhat hard to believe that absolutely no one in Rangers' marketing or PR department would have flagged a potential issue by using just the tune on its own without a specific nod to the 4LHAD lyrics. And this is where the criticism of potential subtle dog-whistling comes in. But, yes, I guess it could have been an honest gaff from some marketing junior.

Either way, everyone loses. Rangers play Hearts at home today and you can guarantee that the 4LHAD song is going to be belted out in defiance. Similarly, you can guarantee that there are going to be some cretins in the crowd who will be singing along to the tune but with quite different lyrics.

Good post, thanks for that.



Now that is interesting. I've read quite a number of posts from Rangers' fans on this since yesterday, across a variety of forums etc., and that's the first time I've seen it put forward as a means to drown out the idiots. For what it's worth, I think emphasizing that outside the club would be massively helpful for Rangers, not to mention presumably in their best interests, as right now, especially at away games, hearing the tune whilst perhaps not being able to immediately discern the lyrics just conjures TFS to mind for so many people (perhaps unfairly). And unfortunately those scenes of the Union Bears(?), which I think may even have made the front pages, will not have helped in this regard, given how recent this was.



This is what I was tying to touch on with my comment about the Scottish Football sub-reddit above. Most of the people I come across or interact with can simply no longer be fucked with this sort of pish. Most just want to support their team, enjoy the football, and have a bit of normal sports rivalry, divorced of the vile and bitter nonsense. It's the idiots that make this hard for everyone.

In terms of Rangers making strides to stamp this out, the issue as I see it at the moment is that whatever measures have been taken are perhaps just not visible enough to those outside the club or not tuning in to 90mins coverage of their games. I'm not sure how you solve that, to be honest. And I appreciate it must be frustrating as a normal supporter who wants nothing to do with any of this shite.

What is this?

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/58942834

It's Irish not Scottish, that what it is 😛

So it was! I would have put my house on it being an old firm game, but just watched again on Y'Tube and right enough.