We love Nico Raskin, we absolutely do. He’s the modern Rino Gattuso at Ibrox but technically much better and far quicker, and he’s a complete first-choice and rightly so.
He’s been great in the press, saying the right things, showing fans he’s already one of us and clearly loving life at Ibrox. Indeed, his media performances have been top.
Until recently.
Nico, unwisely, joined the ‘Bump Yer Gums’ crew by making a bold claim that Rangers are not far behind Celtic.
Now, he didn’t say anything else stupid, just that we needed to win, and that he was ‘sure’ we could do something in the semi-final (maybe tempting fate a bit there too mind you mate) but it was the following quote we have warned about before:
“We’ve now lost two games (against Celtic) since I came. I think the last game was close. We are not too far from them.”
13 points says different, and we really, really wish our players would STOP saying this twaddle.
Until we actually beat Celtic, which at this point is starting to look a long way off, we cannot come out with such tubthumping comments, or, worse, presumptuous ones.
The number of pre-Old Firm quotes which have come back to haunt our club in recent months are starting to pile up terribly, with Lundstram, Tavernier, Sakala and now Nico making comments which were ill-advised at best and downright utterly stupid at worst.
Sakala and Tavernier remain the worst offenders – Sakala riling them up with the other mob comment, before making the whole thing about him and how great he is, only to have a horror show at Parkhead, while Tavernier explained it would be a different Rangers at Hampden only to see us lose yet again.
Lunny and Raskin weren’t AS bad, but our players need to be media coached better than this, to know how to show, for now, humility and honesty without being fatalistic.
Chelsea’s Thiago Silva got massive praise recently for saying it as it is at Stamford Bridge, making no promises, criticising the managerial shambles there and being brutally honest that the club’s strategy was a mess. He was respected by everyone for that transparency.
Rangers players? ‘We’re not that far behind Celtic and we’ll win.’
I mean seriously, take your lesson on how to talk to the media from Thiago, chaps.