Chris Sutton has been writing about his favourite subject again – Rangers – and, rather than addressing everything that has gone wrong at his own club, he has aimed, as usual, an ill-informed and bitter rant in the direction of Steven Gerrard.
It’s clear to see that he still has nightmares after Dunfermline “lying-down” all those years ago, what exactly he is trying to achieve with his Daily Record column is unclear though, and serves only to prove that his opinion is as valid as a Sevco blogger, howling at the moon.
“If I were Jordan Jones and George Edmundson, I’d be feeling betrayed.
“Those two were hung out. Suspended by the club pending an investigation we were told on an official statement. Punted down the road to England.
“Yet the other boys did the same thing and were put straight back into the squad as soon as their isolation period was up. It absolutely stinks of hypocrisy and double standards.
“From the outside, it looks simple. Jones and Edmundson weren’t needed for the squad. With James Tavernier injured, Patterson was. That’s the bottom line. Why not just come out and say so? Let’s not try to dress it up as something else. Let’s not kid ourselves with standards chat.
“Rangers standards on the park this season have not changed. They have been excellent. Off the park, though, this incident suggests standards at the top are set when it suits.”
Where do you start? The latest incident “wasn’t the same” as Sutton claims, Edmundson and Jones attended a party with a random group of people, and as far as we know, Nathan Patterson and co were in a house together playing a game of monopoly and watching the boxing – this doesn’t excuse them but it is fundamentally different.
The way that Rangers dealt with the initial incident was applauded – and rightly so – the fact that the players involved the second time weren’t suspended immediately by the club paints it’s own picture, and it wasn’t because the players were needed.
Edmundson and Jones were fringe players, sent out on loan because there was little chance of them getting any game time and to put them in the shop window, Sutton’s column reeks of desperation, trying to clutch at any negativity that he can surrounding the club, if I were him, I’d be more worried about the standards at my own club where an inability to play by the rules, accept when they were wrong or use common sense has seen them become a laughing stock.