Alex Rae continues to feed Rangers fans his fairy tales

What’s the difference between optimism and propaganda or PR spin? It’s a fine line these days but at Rangers the difference is being massively stretched.

They should be out looking for Hans Christian Anderson to tell the stories of wonder as clearly anything Grimm is out of bounds!

We’ve seen the media start to spin why it would be a good move to sell their top scorer, Alfredo Morelos. We’ve seen and heard ex players talk nonsense and waffle on about how the Rangers just need to sign a couple of blue chip players to complete the picture and challenge Celtic.  And now an article by Gary Ralston in the Daily Record has aimed to trump the rest as he writes about how all is well at Ibrox currently.

And he has an expert. Alex Rae, no-one is quite sure what this 34 appearances in a Rangers shirt ex player is an expert in mind you, other than maybe having a wonderful imagination and sense of perspective. You get the feeling if he was buried in quicksand for hours and slowly sunk to the point of just his head above surface, he’d talk about how brilliant it was and how he can still see lots of great things around him and it’s only a matter of time before the rescue crew turn up. He’d forget to mention the quicksand.

In the article Rae proclaims:

"“Life off the pitch has rarely looked rosier for Rangers since their descent into the financial abyss in 2012.”"

At a time when football is in chaos and a number of clubs are not expected to survive the devastation the coronavirus has brought, the Rangers are doing just swell apparently. That’s the club who pre Covid-19 impacts couldn’t get through a season by matching their income to their costs and outgoings, to the extent of at least £10m. They publicly admitted they needed top ups just to survive. And now they have lost most of their income, match day takings and are only picking up second rate contracts for sponsorship and kits. That sort of never looked rosier!

Allegedly season ticket sales are at record levels for the matches ahead that fans can’t go to. If you trust figures from that source you’ll be comfortable with that as a statement, others may be more sceptical.

And then as with many old storytelling traditions, there is a request to tell one of the old favourites. Alex, go on, tell us that one again about the floating pitch. No, not where games were called off last season as they couldn’t cope with Scottish rainfall, not that sort of floating. Yes, the lowering the pitch story, go on, bring it out again, some folk haven’t laughed at that in ages.

Are you sitting comfortably? Well, Raslton and Rae did cover that to some extent by talking about more  seats being added at Ibrox by lowering the pitch. That has previously been linked to a floating pitch story to overcome local water table issues,  which in reality make the idea an impractical madness:

"“… plans to transform the areas around the ground ahead of the 150th anniversary celebrations in 2022.”“I’d love to see the new seats added, either in the corners of the stadium or by lowering the pitch”"

More seats of course to a Rangers fanatic means more income from tickets and that money is spent on players. Not paying for the building work or covering the day to day running costs the club has a shortfall on.

Rae and Ralston continued that theme by exploring the possibility of bringing in another top player alongside Ryan Jack, who apparently Gerrard has been able to coach to play the ball forward and not just side to side.  Revolutionary thinking and coaching there:

"“They need another like him, someone who is much more rounded. They could do with someone in there with a wee bit of everything. Hopefully, with such buoyant season ticket sales, they can bring him in.”"

Ticket income = more players, simple isn’t it! Don’t worry about the three month deferral of players wages, deferral remember – not cancellation or reduction, just an IOU to pay later. And the three months is almost up, so the new source of income to cover those is… (insert your own imaginary source here).

The oddest part is that the media are complicit in the stories, they write and publish them, they don’t seem to question them with any practical reality. But then wasn’t the Emperor’s New Clothes just a sort of fairy tale too? Perhaps they never learn.