Earlier Ibrox Noise published a piece we knew would stir the hive, because we are willing to broach the topics others are too scared to go near, and of course in this case we discussed James Tavernier’s legitimacy for remaining captain in light of Harry Maguire losing his.

It is our belief he has none, and is nowhere near a leader on the pitch.

Naturally the reaction to this was heavily mixed, with some abusive replies sadly having to be removed from the site/page.

Now, this article you’re currently reading isn’t further debating the merits of Tav as captain – we’re pretty clear on this site how we feel about that; of all staff members and associates of Ibrox Noise, not one has a strong case to keep the man as captain and all are in favour of a new appointment. But that’s not the issue here.

The point here is the intriguing dynamic of how some agreed, disagreed and debated.

While opinion was split, a lot of it was extremely civil – some just said they didn’t agree, some said they did. Of 170 comments so far at the time of writing, while there was a bit of industrially-delivered ‘no I disagree’-type views, it was only a minority of around 10-20 who actually had to be removed from the page for abusing the article or the site.

We guess we’re just a little unsure why these particularly people think the best way to disagree is to claim Ibrox Noise is run by tims, or we’re anti-Rangers, or to rage ‘I’m unfollowing this terrible page’ as some kind of rebuttal, but the majority were infinitely more constructive.

Now, there’s technically hypocrisy here – we called out Richard Foster this morning, with rather industrial language ourselves, to express our disdain over his absolutely ridiculous views on Leon Balogun.

So what’s the difference? The difference is aside a small minority of fans who aren’t super keen on Balogun’s return, the vast vast majority support it hugely, and rate him as a player. As long as he can stay fit. Foster’s view seemed to be describing a different Leon Balogun who kept Kyoto in his back pocket with room to spare – a completely Walter Mitty edition.

Whereas Tavernier is a lot more divisive, and those supporting or criticising him have sizeable respective backing from various sections of the support – it’s a controversial topic, and we’ve never avoided those.

Foster, however, was literally talking of a view almost no Rangers fans also harbour, so we questioned it.

But back to the fans and the Tav response.

We actually enjoyed the responses overall – it unearthed a few bad apples who cannot handle opposing views and resort immediately to slander or abuse, but the distinct majority expressed their view, supportive or critical, with a decent level of civility.

And this is what the point of Ibrox Noise is. Yes, we have the news, yes we have the analysis, but we are not afraid to roll up our sleeves and muck in with the more difficult topics.

If that makes us bad Rangers fans or ‘tims’ so be it, we’ll take that on the chin.

But hey, ‘isn’t it all about opinions’?