Yesterday Ibrox Noise published an article citing Jon McLaughlin as one of the worst goalkeepers Rangers have ever had. Some suggested Simonson, Robinson, Maxwell and Bell were worse, but the fact we’re talking about these guys and having a debate at all shows how absolutely rank rotten McLaughlin is.

However, the response, overwhelmingly in favour of the article, did attract a bit of abuse from about 5% of the audience, about 20 replies of the 300 or so (and still counting) slating the page, calling us ‘children’, ‘a disgrace’, and ‘clearly not Rangers fans’.

The same punters, incidentally, who ignore positive articles praising the job Michael Beale is doing and how great guys like Todd Cantwell are.

That’s right, these people are conspicuously quiet when positive and supportive content is published, which is the absolute majority of the time these days, and when a rare and more critical piece makes its way onto our platforms suddenly we’re not Rangers fans and disgusting.

This leads to a few conclusions:

1: These aren’t Rangers fans, they’re trolls, just trying to antagonise and abuse as trolls do. They are nowhere to be seen with the majority of positive content, but rear their heads when something critical surfaces. They’re not to be taken seriously.

2: They are Rangers fans, but they’re not interested in honesty, integrity, or opinions. They only want 100% propaganda and positivity, but ironically most likely were the ones giving James Sands dog’s abuse and are happy to see he is likely to leave.

In other words? Some fans want their cake and eat it. It’s only ‘unacceptable negativity’ if the punter happens to disagree with that particular view. We recall recently a social media post we made about the recent strikes, and one muppet responded whining about the off-topic content, and said if he wanted that, he’d go elsewhere, and ‘to stick to football please’. The same guy, incidentally, who had taken part in a frivolous technology poll on the page the previous day and hadn’t complained at all.

In short? Some fans only whine about the content when it’s something they personally dislike. It’s not about Ibrox Noise not being Rangers fans, that’s just the easy go-to when they disagree on something. Something else that’s critical that they actually agree with is absolutely fine and they’ll either say nothing or support the opinion.

So they are free to say what they like, as long as it’s never abusive – it often goes into that territory and measures are taken when it does.

But it is only a minority of fans who have this mentality and we absolutely admire and appreciate the huge majority of our audience who support Rangers in the right way, with dignity, honesty and decency.

We know we’re one of the few fan sites willing to be critical of some of the fan base, and that probably makes us marmite to some. We don’t really care. We will always be honest, about the club, ourselves, our supporters, our players – and those who dislike that are free to go elsewhere or be escorted out if they can’t be civil about it.

Thank you for listening. WATP.