Glenn Gibbons: A whiff of hypocrisy as fans vent fury at Walter Smith

The late, irreplaceable Hugh Taylor, probably the most colourful and outrageous Scottish tabloid football writer of the second half of the 20th century, held to a philosophy about our profession that every novice sports journalist - especially those with an unwarranted conceit of themselves - should be made to carry as a reference point throughout their careers.

"Never look for a pat on the back," Hughie would say. "In this business, you bend forward to get the medal hung round your neck and somebody'll kick you up the arse." It is an axiom with which, in the past six days, Walter Smith will have become suddenly and distressingly familiar.

Of the many strands to the fall-out from the latest Old Firm match - the Scottish Cup tie at Ibrox last Sunday - by far the most intriguing is the readiness and rapidity with which so many Rangers supporters appear to have turned on their manager. The scale and the intensity of the hostility, with a sizeable number of calls for the immediate removal of Smith and his assistant, Ally McCoist, has made a deep impact on websites, forums and hotlines on a daily basis.

To anyone not immersed in the turbulent waters of Celtic-Rangers rivalry, this development will appear eccentric in the extreme. The bitterness, after all, is the consequence of a drawn match that was universally reported by the media as a classic, producing four goals, eight yellow and two red cards, and the inevitable contentious behaviour by players and decision-making by match officials.

But none of the statistics, of course, reveals the underlying reason for the unrest. It is that this was a 2-2 draw which could be acclaimed by Celtic fans as a moral victory, while the home support had little choice but to regard it as an escape from jail. This would be unpalatable enough in what would approximate to normal circumstances in this fixture, but the extraordinary events that unfolded last weekend clearly made it intolerable.

Having seen Celtic reduced to ten players with the ordering-off of their goalkeeper, Fraser Forster and their own side establish a 2-1 lead with the penalty he conceded, Rangers fans clearly felt entitled to anticipate uncomplicated progress into the next round of the cup. Especially when the Celtic manager, Neil Lennon, had to sacrifice the formidable Kris Commons when re-shuffling his resources.

The result of the re-jig, however, was that visitors, who had already generally hogged possession, became even more dominant, appearing the more mobile, inventive and ambitious side and the likelier winners.

This improbable reversal was attributed by those angry Rangers supporters directly to Smith's conservative tactics, a perceived unwillingness by the manager to allow his players to try to press home their advantages.In truth, the fury is rather surprising, because experience should have prepared all observers for the Ibrox side's defensive strategy.

What the hostility confirms, above all, is the hypocrisy of "supporters" who will propose a knighthood for Smith (a ludicrous suggestion in any case) and celebrate him as a tactical genius as long as results are positive. A whiff of failure and they're reaching for the tar and feathers.