BBC Scotland are treading on dangerous ground after winning back a place in the Ibrox media tent.
It has already been reported that there were concerns within the club that coverage of the SPFL win over Livingston wasn’t upbeat enough.
If Kenny Macintyre, Alasdair Lamont and Steven Thompson aren’t staunch enough it seems like the peace deal announced on the eve of the new season is already on very thin ice.
Mark Hateley and Richard Foster were called in for pundit duty on Tuesday night but the former England striker went badly off message as he watched the defeat unfold in Belgium.
There isn’t too much that Radio Scotland can do on air over Hateley’s comments but repeating them on their website won’t go un-noticed with an army of angry bears reporting directly to the Ibrox PR operation.
The leading story on the football page of the BBC Scotland website has no by-line but doesn’t spare the feelings of the summer signings or the recruitment team that brought them to Ibrox:
Those attacking casualties were sorely felt with the front three of Malik Tillman, Rabbi Matondo and Antonio Colak – all signed this summer – ineffectual. In defence, the deployment of John Lundstram in a makeshift central three deprived Rangers of one of their most commanding midfielders.
Former Bayern Munich forward Tillman mirrored his team in starting brightly before fading, while Colak had Rangers’ best glimpse of goal, failing to connect with a dangerous Tillman cross.
Hateley says Croatia striker Colak, who arrived from Greek side PAOK, has to offer much more.
“Colak for me was a waste of time basically,” he told BBC Scotland. “The first option should be into your central striker. If Morelos is playing there the ball goes into him.
“Colak didn’t demand the ball. You’ve got to be asking more of your centre forwards, especially when you’re playing away from home in Europe.
“From 25 minutes onwards it was a poor, poor show from Rangers. They were just a nonentity tonight. It is one of the poorest, most ineffective games I’ve seen Rangers play under Giovanni.”
Tomorrow the Ibrox media team will arrange a conference call to preview the match with Kilmarnock before Macintyre and the BBC newshounds are given pre and post match interviews with van Bronckhorst on Saturday.
Don’t know why sevco should be so bothered about current coverage: even the average bear can see for themselves just how poor their team is playing.
Questionable win at Livi, fully deserved loss at Union – and by throwing recent signings into such an important match it just highlights the dearth of quality in the sevco squad.
The Killie game could be tough: if sevco don’t get the 3 points and don’t get past Union – will the bears be growling for a new manager…? 🙂
I have a wee bit of sympathy for Gio, [just wee], because after getting to a Euro final the Ibrox expectations will be even more unreasonably high, but he only got buttons to replace 2 of his best players – and to somehow further improve his squad.
Gio could have decided to do walking away this summer, rather than getting chased down Edmiston Drive.
The orcs , the laptop loyal and ex huns like Ferguson and Boyd etc are all sh*tting themselves that don’t make it through and the fear is ramped up x1000 because they know we’re already there
The publicly funded BBC Scotland and The Rangers are intricately linked.Like the Masons and secrecy! The Beeb will be squirming that their pet project may be unhappy with its non conformance to the party line! Look out for plenty of feel good messages in the coming days ,weeks and months.We can’t have the establishment club having a hissy fit with the establishment news outlet again, can we ?