Bakbear

Trait 2. Deliberately miss the point. The Rangers supporters who believe there to be bias, do not believe that one referee is biased towards our club. We believe that all referees have a bias that has been generated over the last 8 years due to the pressure applied to them by certain clubs and their supporters while other clubs and their supporters have taken a dignified silence approach. Trait 1 Be Contrary if you have watched all the Rangers games this season and feel that the decisions that have gone against us in those games. Compares equally to the decisions that have gone for us in those games. Then the discussion is over. In the interests of sporting investigative journalism why not create a spreadsheet and have a for and against list. Put down in the “for” list all the Pena red cards that never happened and all the Morelos red cards that never happened and then in the “against” column add in all the red cards we wrongly got or red card challenges that were overlooked and let’s see what it looks like. I am willing to accept that I am perceiving this incorrectly

Dude I have never really had the inclination to engage in a debate with you. It is akin to debating a brick wall. You have three traits 1. Be contrary 2. Deliberately miss the point 3. Set up straw men You have exhibited all 3 of these characteristics in this post. Now I don’t want to be the guy who tackles the man instead of the ball so let me try to respond and then I am happy to agree to disagree You are constantly trying to convince us that with all your vast experience of watching Scottish football it has you uniquely placed to confirm to us that the referees in Scotland are shite. Please. Stop. We all agree. This is not the point and you are deliberately missing it (trait 2) That kind of deals with 70% of your post. The brass tacks is are they biased? You have said that time and again studies have shown that teams with the louder crowd get decisions. To copy a contrary trait from you, please link these studies? Only joking don’t link the studies as I don’t care and it’s a pointless request as it is irrelevant to the discussion (trait 3) if, as you say, time after time studies have proven that the louder crowd influence a referee into giving a decision then why is it the biggest and best supported club in the country were on the end of the overwhelming majority of incorrect decisions last season? If it was the case that Motherwell played Kilmarnock and the poor refereeing standards meant that the overwhelming majority of the decisions went in Motherwells favour over the course of the game. With Motherwell getting away with a couple of red cards, awarded a soft penalty and scoring a dubious goal, while Kilmarnock had a wrong red card issued, one of their players injured by an assault of a challenge and a stonewall penalty turned down. Then Klimarnock would be entitled to think that referee was biased against them. Now take that scenario into Kilmarnocks next game, the same thing happens to them even though they are now playing St Johnstone and again the following week against Aberdeen. Then Kilmarnock fans would for sure say there was a bias against them. Because the facts are that poor refereeing is poor for everyone. The old adage “it evens out over a season” applies when there is consistently poor refereeing, but if it’s inconsistent and it is inconsistent to the detriment of a particular club then there is a bias. How do you train an animal or a child? You reward it for good behaviour and punish it for bad behaviour. Referees have felt the pain when they have made calls that have hurt a certain club. They have been pain free when they have made calls that have hurt us. Isn’t it time to bring the pain? Even in the form of registering our complaints. I hope to fuck Gerrard thinks so. I hope he ditches dignified silence and calls out every single Ref fuck up against us and highlights every wrong decision

So 8 pages in and some very bizarre straw man arguments being laid out. Talk of IRA and Chris Sutton, suggestions that 2010 isn’t “years ago”. Some fucking bizarre notion that a ref has it in for St Johnstone and the complete inability to grasp that if you are top of the FairPlay league then it is statistically likely you have less decisions to complain about. There is no conspiracy ffs. But there is unquestionably a bias. I don’t know why people can’t entertain the notion of a bias without a conspiracy. I watch only Rangers games. I watched nearly every league game last season. I saw the decisions in those games. The decisions in those games overwhelmingly went against us and for our opponents. Thats not to say we didn’t get away with a few. It’s also not to say that the opposition had the odd wrong decision but we suffered more in those games than our opponents. The standard of refereeing is absolutely howling but if a referee is faced with a difficult decision then I firmly believe that he sees the path of least resistance is to call the decision against Rangers. I don’t know how that can be disputed frankly.. However even at that, I am referring to incidents such as the Scott Allan challenge on Rossiter or the punch in the balls of David Bates. Bad decisions by the referee that I believe were caused by “path of least resistance” bias, Where it gets taken to new depths of incompetence is the first Hibs game where Tav is booked for being assaulted by Stokes, or Morelos is booked for being on the end of a flying clothes line from Darren McGregor. Those are the kinds of decisions that prompt suggestions of conspiracy. Its like this; in 2010 The scum attacked referees so insistently that the referees ended up striking. Subsequently the scum fans through their new found computer skills have waged a war on social media on all things institutional in Scottish football, the consequences of giving anything against them is so severe and the consequences of giving anything against Rangers so .... well..... inconsequential.... that refs are now conditioned to make biased decisions Of course their fans still complain about decisions despite topping the fair play charts, if they stop complaining the balance would be restored. *Note the Hivs are second in the fair play league with referee bully-in-chief leading their charge, wonder why so few red and yellow cards dished out to the teams in green ? Dignified silence has done absolute fuck all good ......in any situation ...... and if breaking the dignified silence leads to accusations of paranoia bring it on and let’s go

I would love to have data and the patterns but I am not willing or able to go and do the research. Not having a go, more of a dig at the obsessed ones who send P.I.s after referees and officials to try and sway popular opinion in their favour

Sometimes it’s handy to have sad obsessed supporters with nothing better to do than to troll through all the history and establish patterns. Unfortunately most bears have jobs

Is that really that important though? Take Barcelona and Real out of the Spanish league and what is left? Those big two are generating enough interest in La Liga to sustain the whole country's football infrastructure making Spanish football the most successful in Europe. Just because we are a two horse race doesn't mean that our nation shouldn't be doing a fuck lot better than we are

I live in Oman and I saw a kid walking in the mall this morning with a scum top on.... wanted to vom

The hatred is killing football in this country.... when Dundee United played in the UEFA cup final I wanted them to win.... I was only 10 mind you so clearly supremely naive, but irrespective, there seemed to be a lot less hate. As I have posted many times on here, the hatred in our game really ramped up with John Reid joining the scum. Its been all downhill since. not just for Rangers but for the whole footballing nation. If Scottish football could get over their hatred of all thing Rangers and ask questions of why we are performing so badly on a European scale then we might start seeing change. being back in the top 10 of revenue earners because Rangers are back in the top league may sound like good news but imagine how we would move up that top 10 if we actually had some smart businessmen running the FA in the interests of ALL member clubs instead of just the few (one). Investors must look at the hatred and division here and think "fuck spending money there" But even with current levels of investment we need to see much more development of our game and many more youths coming through. We just spent 4 years working our way through the lower leagues spreading the cash all through the divisions, what have they done with the extra cash? Have we been the catalyst for a conveyor belt of talent coming through? Have we fuck, we kept the lights on for a wee while for the smaller clubs and fuck all changed, they went back to normal once we went up the leagues. Rangers are in the weird situation of being the financial juggernaut that keeps the lights on in Scottish football and yet have almost no say in how it gets run

Your side note is a very interesting discussion point IMO. We are always talking about what a back water league this is, but top ten revenue generating league shows that we are not using our revenues well enough. Certainly not top ten International team (out of the European teams) and I very much doubt Scotland is top 10 in CL and EL. Our Refs are amateur and absolute shite, our teams cannot compete on the European stage and our international team hasn't qualified for a major tournament in how long? When was the last Scottish World Class player? Our Football institutions are failing us but all anyone is interested in is trying to kill the big bad Rangers

I think that article really sums up the feelings of your average Rangers fan. Not a big grand conspiracy orchestrated by Dr death. More a drip drip drip of negativity about Rangers and pro -celtic mindedness growing within influential roles. Glad to see us on the front foot but it is going to have to be the same relentlessness to bring us back to centre that moved us here. It will take years and it will take effort. I like the reference to creating a safe haven in the media, this is a major requirement. People need to be able to speak their mind and report in a balanced fashion without fear of retribution. Not sure how this is going to be created but it is a must. If a mainstream media outlet starts reporting balanced content then it should be given our backing

How about now?

Win the league. That is all.

It’s all just innocent incompetence. The authorities are bad but they are equally bad for all teams. Just listen to fans of all teams complain that they are hard done by, it’s not just Us blah blah blah. Rangers hating is the new national sport

And yet some of our own would have you believe that there is no agenda against us! As others have said, they want us compliant. Building bridges? When we are getting constantly fucked over? Youse can fuck right off. You take care of your shit and we will take care of ours and let’s see who is building bridges eh? we didn’t start the fight but by fuck we will finish it. We haven’t even started down the route of rejecting away allocation yet. Youse would be fucked if we ever got pissed off enough to do that. The only bit of that whole diatribe worth reading was making a statement by putting out a winning team. I agree with that. They better hope it’s not for a while yet because once we are back on top things could get ugly.

So finally got round to reading it. Wish I had read it earlier. I think it’s a great post and gets to the heart of some of our woes over the last decade. What we have to focus on is holding the middle ground. The problem is often the response to one extremist behaviour is a counter acting extremist behaviour. We can’t allow ourselves to go to other extremes. We have to bring the discussion back to the middle and keep it there. I will give an example: how is it even remotely acceptable that the union flag is not allowed to be flown over government buildings or put on British produce? But I don’t believe we should surrender the Saltire to these extremists. It’s our flag too. That it forms the greater part of the Union flag should not be lost on anyone but at the same time we should not consider the Saltire as Off limits because they are trying to hijack it. Scottish, British and proud is the central ground here. We need to start framing ourselves as the progressive, forward thinking centrists who want to put all this archaic behaviour in the past (like peadophilia and denominational schooling) currently they are portraying Rangers as right wing which is just not the case but in a society which is becoming increasingly polarised, when extremist have hijacked the traditional left then it is easy to portray centrists as extremists.

Doesn’t have to be a masterminded conspiracy to be institutionally biased. All you would need is enough people in enough positions of influence that are against something. They wouldnt have had to have met to discuss their conspiracy. They wouldn’t have sat and come up with a master plan. Just need enough like minded people in positions where they can sway outcomes, portray differences and form popular opinion. Like Brexit, or Capitalism, or the final solution. Its terrifyingly simple for lies to become established beliefs. Mob mentality is scary. Look at the hatred for Rangers, look how many clubs absolutely clamoured for our death. Compare and contrast any other club that have had insolvency events in the last 20 years. That hatred wasn’t always there. It was nurtured and encouraged. Maybe not by a Machiavellian genius pulling strings Moriarty style but by bitter and twisted individuals who worked their way into influence. And don’t tell me it was a reaction to being the best club in Scotland and the reaction to our 9 in a row years where we lorded it over the others. That’s fucking nonsense akin to “she deserved it for wearing provocative clothing”. Rangers have without a shadow of a doubt been subjected to unfair treatment over the last 10 years by the Scottish establishment .....by the football authorities, by the media and by the legal framework (OBFA)

That’s no a post that’s a thesis

Oh and just to add. The home country that they are so proud of? that country is actually moving on. Ditching its catholic ties. Working hard to put the old ways firmly in the past. Rangers are accused of living in the past? These fucking paedo scumbags can’t let go of theirs. They are going to be more fenian than the republic itself within a generation, if they are not already.

Chip chip chip. “Rangers were set up as an exclusive organisation.” Rangers were set up by 4 lads who wanted to play football. I doubt they even considered their own culture as most lads don’t. celtic came along and decided they would establish a team to stop the new immigrants from fraternising with the non-catholics. Divisiveness then, divisiveness now(schooling). That’s the difference when trying to indoctrinate people to a cult. They claim to be open to all as long as you convert. Feed poor families? More like buying their devotion through charity. Sure we will feed you, just realise that this food is from the holy trinity themselves. only one team in Glasgow was established to divide. To separate. Only one religion continues to divide and separate. When celtic come out and disavow the catholic church and when schools go full non denominational and once at least 3 generations have passed only then can they try and peddle this fucking bollocks. The problem is the neutrals who are hard of thinking (like collymore) believe this utter codswallop. When a lie is repeated often enough without the truth being given proportional exposure, the lie becomes the truth.

Skrtel was too similar a signing to Alves. Big name, end of career, Big wages. Difference being there was a significant fee involved with Skrtel and even mor significant wages I was very concerned that we were looking to spend a chunk of our transfer budget on him and I am pretty happy we have seen sense and that his wages are a stumbling block. If Gerrard thought at any stage we were going to be paying 60k a week wages ( and I don’t believe he ever thought that) then he was kidding himself.

Holy fucking shit. I have never insulted anyone on here and I am not going to break the habit of a lifetime for this post. But..... holy shit

The bears that are saying this is just “point scoring” or feel in some way that highlighting peadophilia is inappropriate, are an indication of how successful propaganda is. This new attitude that the condemnation of a crime, the reporting of a crime or the outrage at a crime is in some way worse than the crime itself is utterly bizarre. If people think the Rangers fans sing BJK to revel in the abuse of kids they are so confused it’s not funny. There was a campaign started by the scum to have Jock Stein posthumously knighted. That’s when the BJK chant started. Rangers supporters, outraged at the thought of a man willing to cover up what is looking more and more like a peadophile ring that could be intertwined with the high profile incidents within the Catholic Church, endeavoured to highlight his abhorrent cowardism and ensure he should never be knighted. As an institution, these horrible fuckers have shielded peadophiles for decades. Perhaps even more nefarious, they could actually have encouraged peadophiles. Yet look at the contrast between the recent report on a coach at Rangers versus the scums decades long trail of abuse. It’s absolutley fucking obvious. Any institution, sporting or otherwise (cubs, brownies, BB, outward bound , sports clubs etc etc) have a duty of care to ensure that the children entrusted to their care are protected from sexual predators. Every single institution is vulnerable to such predators and can be fooled. As long as they are vigilant and as long as any concerns are reported and investigated immediately and any guilt dealt with swiftly and to the full extent of the law then there can be little criticism. But when it is a widespread pattern of behaviour, known about and covered up, perhaps even nurtured, for decades then that institution needs to face the consequences whatever they may be.

If Ryan Jack made that identical tackle today he would see a red card. Games fucked.

I’ve been to Darfur.

Gonna be a long summer