As recently as December 20 Jonny McFarlane was warning that irresponsible stoking of conspiracies about referees was leading football into a very dark place.
Since Saturday afternoon the various Newsquest titles have been leading the attacks on Willie Collum, feeding off fan media hysteria with mainstream ‘credibility’ as every off the record briefing from Ibrox is published without question.
Just a decade ago McFarlane was an office boy at the Daily Record, hanging on to the stories of real reporters as they shared tales of private audiences with Sir David and drooled over the wonders of Sir Walter, big Eck and wee Dickie.
With legacy media in absolute freefall McFarlane is now in charge of digital sport for titles including The Herald, Glasgow (Evening) Times, Rangers Review, Celtic Way and The National. With just over 11,000 followers on Twitter it is hard to see how Newsquest Sport survives into the future under the vision of McFarlane.
Incredible, absolutely incredible ??? pic.twitter.com/0lGE7NzscI
— Hun-Occhio (@Hun_Occhio) January 2, 2024
Within 28 hours of the final whistle at Celtic Park on Saturday two statements were released to the favoured media sources by the mysterious Ibrox Spokesman.
There has been no mainstream comment about the David Turnbull penalty claim, flagged for offside by Callum Spence who missed the Sima offside call or the assaults on Paulo Bernardo and Greg Taylor by Connor Goldson and Dujon Sterling.
Yesterday the Herald were sharing the off the record briefing from the Ibrox Tribute Act, quoting their version of the SFA meeting from the un-named Ibrox spokesman.
David Dickinson, Alan Muir or Steven McLean are expected to get the next matches involving Philippe Clement’s side, away to Dumbarton in the Scottish Cup followed by Hibs at Easter Road in the SPFL. Andrew Dallas and Greg Aitken on VAR duties.
? “Having listened to the audio, there is no mention of a potential offside at the time of the handball decision.”
Rangers have met with the Scottish FA for talks over the non-penalty incident in Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Celtic.
Read more ??https://t.co/0nXDH4y2w4
— The Rangers Review (@RangersReview55) January 3, 2024
Do you mean this? pic.twitter.com/CedJyHmVD1
— WillieMillersMoustache (@williemillersm1) December 31, 2023
Dallas and Aiken are corrupt Huns ,Aiken had a photo of himself and fat sally in his Facebook page , this is what needs investigation , how can the son of a bigot and a man clearly shown himself to be a new club supporter be allowed anywhere near VAR when their team playing . Celtic board now have an opportunity to insist on all VAR calls in games to be made public . We’ve seen at least 20 penalties awarded to the new club that were not penalties given for the same offence to other teams (shirts be pulled an example) every goal and free kick is run over by var every corner in every Celtic game every decision checked but only against Celtic . VAR officials are corrupt in Scotland the white league know it and now UEFA are watching
1 result has caused absolutely pandemonium and carnage over there,,,and the media and press and radio fones ins,,,wota nasty bunch of peepul they are,,,I personally think their is a big implosion on the horizon with them,, bunch of rabid bastards,
What was the final score? Shower of corrupt moaning rockets, this lot who went out of existence through cheating wanting to run the game .
So another hypocrite ‘when is suits’ is this McFarlane fella…
Oh man – I’m so glad that I just buy ma local paper which is out weekly –
And thankfully doesn’t mention Sevco (or Celtic for that matter) very often !