Simon Jordan swiftly dismantled Jim White’s suggestion that Celtic and Rangers should release a joint statement condemning the disorder at Ibrox on Sunday, calling out the idea for the hollow exercise it would be.
White had posed the question during their talkSPORT broadcast, pointing to the vacuum left by both clubs staying silent in the days since the chaos that followed Celtic’s penalty shootout victory. He floated the idea of the two boardrooms linking arms, so to speak, and issuing a shared condemnation of their supporters’ behaviour as a show of unity.
Jordan was having none of it. He made the point that there is a meaningful difference between a considered statement, one that actually investigates what happened and addresses the underlying issues, and an optic statement produced purely to satisfy what the media wants to hear. The latter, in his view, would make no practical difference to anyone. Condemning the scenes publicly does nothing to change the facts of what occurred.
When White pressed further, suggesting it might at least represent an opportunity for the clubs to demonstrate some kind of unity, Jordan’s response was characteristically direct. He pointed out that Celtic and Rangers cannot agree on anything, and that the recent ticket allocation dispute, which dragged on for years before the SFA stepped in to effectively force Rangers to open the Broomloan Stand for Sunday’s tie, is evidence enough of that. The notion that two clubs who cannot reach basic operational agreements would voluntarily stand together to condemn their own supporters is, as Jordan made clear, completely detached from the reality of how this rivalry operates.
His broader point was a fair one. Both clubs would sooner look to apportion blame to the other side than accept shared responsibility. A joint statement was never going to happen, and pretending otherwise serves nobody.