THERE was once a well-known Scottish sports journalist who was renowned for not being entirely enamoured of Rangers and Celtic football clubs. He was fanatical about his home-town team, and no, he wasn’t one of those people who claimed to support a local club first and one half of the Old Firm second.

Long passed away, he just disliked the bigotry he encountered at Ibrox and Parkhead, and made his feelings known, though not in print.

Because of his position as a football correspondent, he owned a few shares in Rangers and Celtic. This enabled him to attend the annual general meetings of both clubs, back in the day when journalists were sometimes excluded from Ibrox or Parkhead for writing articles that did not please those clubs.

They could kick out a hack but not a shareholder, was his reasoning, and I believe Scottish newspapers – but not The National – still have club shares today. You would be surprised how often papers and individual journalists are threatened with expulsion from what is, after all, their place of work when they are covering matches and press conferences.

They are a cancer throughout football, these blazered Gauleiters who think anyone being critical of their club should be shown the door. “Freedom of the press? Sorry, we’re on Planet Football and that’s not a human right here...”

These clubs conveniently forget that the media give them coverage that they simply could not afford to buy, and I write as someone who is in favour of clubs developing their own websites and communicating directly with their fans via social media and texts. I was advocating that approach before Facebook was even a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye.

As long as the press are given their place and are able to ask questions and interview people, we have no more right than an ordinary supporter to hear from a club first. It’s been a tough transition being asked to take our place in the queue but I can’t condemn a practice I have long supported. In recent weeks we have seen Rangers chairman Dave King take to the club’s website to make his feelings known on various issues, and I commend him for that. We can disagree with what he says, but I have no doubt they are his words, and I wish all club chairmen would do the same – Ian Bankier at Celtic, for instance, might well have gotten more sympathy for his stance against the “criminally racist” internet trolls targeting director Ian Livingston if he had explained his remarks on the club website.

Where I fundamentally disagree with King is the approach he is taking to the club’s AGM. The resolutions aimed at effectively barring Mike Ashley from having any say in the running of the club in which, after all, he is the third largest shareholder, will dominate proceedings on Friday, following the court case which Rangers only partially won. As I predicted earlier this month, taking on Ashley with these resolutions is having serious repercussions.

This is in addition to the court cases in which Rangers and their chairman are already involved with Ashley – King is due up for an alleged breach of an Ashley-inspired gagging order at the High Court in London on December 9, and next month the SFA will start its defence of Ashley’s case for a judicial review of the Association’s decision that Dave King is a fit and proper person to be involved in football – given the club’s interest, no doubt they will be legally represented when that case comes to court. Which raises an interesting question – if King is jailed or heavily fined for his alleged breach of the court order in London, will he still be considered “fit and proper” by the SFA?

I do not think King is Machiavellian enough to pick a fight with Ashley to distract Rangers’ shareholders from his own situation or the losses the club has made but in putting forward the anti-Ashley resolutions the board has seriously antagonised a man who is a billionaire and who is on the warpath against King.

Ashley will stop at nothing to beat King. He simply does not get defeated in business matters. He also has deep, deep pockets for paying lawyers, and will ignore fans’ protests all day long – ask the Newcastle United fans.

As someone who has dealt with lawyers all my working life, I can say without hesitation that the companies involved in the ongoing cases are excellent practitioners, and their excellence does not come cheap.

There is also the cost of the court itself. It is axiomatic in Scots law that the expenses of an action follow success. If Rangers lose today, the bill will be in six figures at least, which raises another interesting question – who is paying the legal costs of opposing Ashley?

Is it King himself, the Rangers Football Club Ltd, or Rangers International Football Club plc? That might be one for the AGM. Of course, the sensible approach would be for all disputes between Ashley and Rangers to go to some form of negotiated agreement, perhaps by binding arbitration, and then club and retailer could move forward together.

I have a feeling that won’t happen, which is a pity because this AGM could have been about celebrating the club’s rebirth and progress. Instead, there will be unpleasantness about matters which have little to do with football and plenty to do with egos.