As noted in the inaugural Yorkshire Whistler article of the season, the pain of last seasons ending has not dissipated for many.
It has manifest in endless debates online surrounding each and every refereeing call. Pundits and self styled publicists now pile in on every opportunity.
I am happy to check out of it all and rely on the Yorkshire based neutral expert to shape my opinions.
But it doesn’t look like it is going to end soon.
So, are there available frameworks to understand what is going on?
40 Years of Hurt, and Aggrieved Entitlement
I reviewed two years of Willie Collum’s tenure here. Hearts supporters may want to revisit this being new to this feature.
TL;DR – Scottish referees are objectively poor (ask UEFA and FIFA). This is to be expected so long as they are part-time in a full-time sport of increasing pace and intensity. Furthermore, the SFA lack diversity in their appointments with too many refs from the West of Scotland.
However, the evidence points to the incompetence being spread around the league more or less equally. This is progress. Under Crawford Allan, refereeing appeared to serve the interests of one club above all others, The Rangers, with statistically significant patters of assistance across a range of public data points.
The Ghost of Albert Kidd
With Hearts supporters, there is understandable grievance given the pain of 1986, long remembered, and an equally painful fall at the last hurdle in 2026. Albeit this was a stutter that started several fences out.
As shown in the Speedboat League series, Hearts last season enjoyed significant upside variance for most of the season, which then collapsed at the tail end. In common with most football fan groups, they failed to recognise when their side had been “lucky” and railed at the injustice of it all when the variance monster nom nom nommed their ass, as it inevitably does. Such is football.
In short, it’s normal and the variance monster seen through the prism of Kubler Ross has this largely explained.
Aggrieved Entitlement
With The Rangers fan group, the increasingly desperate need to micro analyse every decision in every match hints at an altogether darker and more sinister underlying affliction than the natural human grief cycle.
Only last Thursday, a horrific challenge by new hero Cameron Devlin on a FK Jablonec player was positioned as “penalty to Rangers”.
Collectively, the Ibrox fan base show evidence that they display what sociologists and psychologists could characterise as Aggrieved Entitlement. The foundational work on this concept is from a 2013 book by the sociologist Michael Kimmer entitled “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era”.
Simply, when a group in society is used to historical social dominance (in this case manifest in favourable refereeing), and that privilege is withdrawn (the increased scrutiny from VAR and the public review of refereeing performances – Willie Vision), it can be followed by an underlying sense of grievance and perceived loss. Which is psychologically painful.
This seems to be evident in some of what the fan base state. If you have the stomach, study the fan forums and social media outpourings from Ibrox-minded commentators. I believe there is a reasonable case to be made that manifestations of aggrieved entitlement have been evident across sections of Scottish society for a long time, and the refereeing changes have simply been further grist to that mill of sadness.
Some seemingly obvious public tells noted in academia and media (always believe people when they reveal themselves):
· Post upon post in The Rangers forums about the perceived erosion of white, male, protestant (mainly working-class) identifies and the blaming of Catholics for “taking jobs” and achieving positions of status in society;
· The defensive response to marching rituals; it is not sufficient to have hundreds of Orange Marches, but they must be routed across perceived Catholic areas of cultural or religious significance. To raise objection is to be met with allegations of “state discrimination”;
· The preponderance of the “two sides of the same coin” narrative in relation to “Old Firm” disorder when Scottish Government data shows Catholics suffer disproportionate targeting of religious hate crimes. “Both sides are as bad” when only one club in the UK has multiple sanctions for “racist and discriminatory chanting” by UEFA, and two of the most common refrains heard at Ibrox have been established in Scottish law as illegal on the grounds of discrimination (“The Billy Boys” and “The Famine Song”) but remain tolerated by the SFA;
· The continuing resentment towards “Catholic” schooling which ignores the fact this was a legally established measure to protect the educational rights of minority groups;
· Mention any of this and it will be met with cries of denial that any issues of discrimination still exist despite inequality of outcome still being a concern in 21st Century Scotland.
The list could go on. These themes, it could be argued, are signs of aggrieved entitlement. In comparison, the targeting of Scottish referees is relatively small beer. However, it could also be argued is a sign of what is, ahem, a Pattern of Behaviour.
Celtic fans make hay with the trope of the Pope’s visit to Scotland in 1982 being the catalyst for all sorts of Catholic dominance over institutional structures. Back to football: apparently Peter Lawwell runs a cabal of Catholic interest that bends the direction of the game to his Feniany will. You think I’m daft? Read the forums (and then shower)!
Aggrieved entitlement is potentially being further manifest in Scottish football in response to the parity of outcome due to changes in refereeing protocols. Mainly, the introduction of VAR and measures bringing transparency and scrutiny to key decisions. Simply, referees do not want to be the unwitting stars on Willie Vision.
Ibrox supporters, their privileges secured through patterns of assistance removed, display symptoms of this affliction. Railing against any and every call made in every and any game in Scotland, always brought back to some sense of Celtic benefit. There is a sinister focus on certain referees who might be of the Catholic faith or may be in possession of Feniany names, like Kevin.
In essence, the famous aphorism “When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression”.
This season already feels like it will be long and tedious in this regard.
Have pity my friends, they are suffering deeply traumatic pain, which, in generations, may pass as sons, daughters, and grandchildren accept equality is the way forward.
Extended metaphor alert... The financial crisis of the late 2000s was followed, in the UK most of all, by a period of 'austerity' that was economically unjustified and needlessly socially damaging. The political extremism that followed gave rise to, and was sorely exacerbated by, the economic and social damage of Brexit. For a period though, Brexit allowed some of those affected to feel a sort of victory had been won - until reality bit again, harder. And here we are, almost twenty years on, with a non-trivial part of the political discourse entirely dominated by the idea of an entitlement that has been thwarted (by foreigners, minorities, women etc).
The liquidation of Rangers provided a similar shock to the crisis, in the sense that old assumptions about prosperity/dominance were completely upturned. The parallel for some is of an entitlement withdrawn. The Sevco period provided a Brexity moment of 'victory' (up yours, now we're coming back to dominate, etc), sustained for a while by promotions and hope - even though the structures put in place were *worse* in terms of the prospects for shared prosperity/football dominance etc. The bad guys made out like bandits and everyone else paid for it. Again.
Now things have, perhaps more finally, levelled off. Footballing dominance is unlikely to return, but the position is still fairly safe near the top of the pile - if people are willing to accept that. But the threat comes an entitlement that says we must be able to do better, and the fact that we're not can only mean that we're being deliberately thwarted by <them>.
The UK government should do all it can to invest in public services through progressive taxation and careful fiscal management. The Rangers should focus on building the best possible structures, transparent governance, youth set-up, analytics capacity, etc etc, to make the absolute most of their resource base. The danger is that the pressures of entitlement push the decisionmakers to more and more short-termist foolishness, ultimately scuppering any hopes of medium-long term sustainable success...
Always informative and to the point.