Rangers and our fans are guilty of past arrogance in the Champions League – underestimating Malmo in 2021, then reckoning we’d have no issues in the group stage last year.
There’s a real entitlement among some football fans, regardless of their club indeed, particularly those used to success, that dismisses opponents and then consequently pays for that arrogance. As we say, Rangers fans were guilty of it pre-Malmo, and then expected a win or two in the group stage of the competition proper last year.
In both cases we were deeply humbled. Ibrox Noise had been a dissenting voice again – we’d warned Malmo were far from pushovers, and we really only saw the group stage as a ‘happy to be there’ scenario.
Rangers fans are a little more humble now – unfortunately the UCL group campaign put us in our place and until we fare better, that’s where we’ll stay, and the support has, while utter expectations to win everything, as a Rangers fan should, tempered this and blended it with more realistic ideas.
But then we come to Genk and poor Bryan Heynen who has been completely misrepresented by the Scottish media, with a deeply misleading headline, which claimed the former charge of Alex Rae and Alex McLeish was dismissing Servette and even Rangers in the next round.
He absolutely wasn’t:
“The match against Servette is extremely important. We are desperate to reach the Champions League group stage, so we will do everything we can to win. We all dream of the Champions League here again. Everyone wants to play at the highest level. The opportunity of getting to the group stage is something that hugely motivates us. I would love to have another go at that level. We are going to give everything on Wednesday and then we will see what happens in the next round if we can defeat Servette.”
There is nothing wrong with this at all. But the headline?
“Genk skipper Bryan Heynen insists they’re already looking past Rangers”
Not he doesn’t, not to anyone who can read English. He admits Servette will be a battle, then if they make it past them, which they didn’t, they’d see how they got on v Rangers.
Nowhere does Heynen dismiss Rangers or belittle us.
The Scottish media loves a headline, of misrepresenting facts and misleading a story.
This is just another example.