"Negative" Scottish football makes me "depressed", says Rangers boss Mark Warburton

Warburton described some of the media coverage in the aftermath of Celtic’s emphatic victory over his side as “poisonous”, and despite the score-line, he maintains that the press his side received was undeserved.

The Ibrox boss also believes that the game in this country has a wider problem with negativity that is dragging it down.

Read more: Mark Warburton: Gap between Rangers and Celtic not as big as 5-1 scoreline suggested

He will look to turn the adverse reporting on Rangers into a positive though, by using it to fire up his players for the rest of the season.

“There were a number of things a couple of people wrote where I just thought ‘Why are you doing that?’” Warburton said.

Read more: Numan: Champions League could drain Celtic - and open the door for Rangers in title race

“We got beat 5-1 at Parkhead and there is no hiding place. But I just felt some of it was undeserved. I’m just speaking my mind.

“People will say to me ‘will you use that defeat as motivation?’. For that one, I will use some of the comments. I will say to the players that when they get it right, they should remember those comments.

“You have to rationalise it. That’s how psychology works in football or any other business.

“The day after the game, batter us. Quite rightly. Our supporters were agitated and upset, of course they were.

“When you are the manager of a big football club, you are not going to get any pats on the back after that.

“I’m not thin-skinned, but sometimes I just find it so, so negative. It is ongoing, every day. I find the whole Scottish game is negative. It’s got to be better.

“For me, there is a bigger picture. I’m an Englishman in Scotland and it’s so negative. I watched the programme ‘Scotland’s Game’ on the BBC and it was so depressing.

“I’m English and I’m thinking ‘Bloody hell’. I’m feeling depressed about it. It just seems so negative.

“We got beat 5-1, so we are not going to get rosy reports - of course we aren’t. I’m not so foolish or naive to think that.

“But I think some of the comments were unnecessary. I read one or two things which I thought were totally inappropriate.

“I’m not going to go into the details. I just felt some of them were unnecessary. I felt they were malicious, poisonous. It doesn’t matter, that’s just my opinion.

“All I was doing was being honest, I didn’t dig anyone out and say ‘he wrote that’. In general, we quite rightly got battered in the press.”

As an outsider coming into Scottish football, Warburton has been taken aback by how downbeat people north of the border are about the state of our game.

And he says he can understand why some Scots choose to flee the country rather than be dragged down by the negative attitudes you encounter here.

“I listen to other people and a lot of Scottish people who are my friends in the game tell me that’s why they live down south, because the negativity just hangs heavy," he said. "It does.

“Am I the only one to say that? I just see so much negative rhetoric, negative comments.

“One of the comments I got was ‘go to your mates at Talksport for a positive outlook.’ Well, yeah, I’d rather have a positive outlook than a negative outlook all day long.

"I’m watching the programme on the TV and as an English football supporter, it’s so depressing.

“God knows what it’s like for a Scot supporting your national team.

“Do I just sit here and say ‘sod it, that’s just the way it is?’ Or do I speak my mind?

“I’m just saying, I like to be positive. I’m an English football fan watching these programmes and thinking ‘bloody hell, it’s so depressing!’”

Warburton may be an unlikely figure to leap to the defence of Celtic after they came in for criticism of their own after the seven-nil defeat to Barcelona on Tuesday night.

Read more: Mark Warburton: Gap between Rangers and Celtic not as big as 5-1 scoreline suggested

But he has urged people to take a step back and consider just what the Old Firm derby would have taken out of Brendan Rodgers’ men prior to their visit to the Nou Camp, before pouring scorn on their performance.

He said: “The intensity of the Old Firm game for both teams took a lot out of them.

“The build-up to it, the game itself, the intensity of that from a football player’s perspective was huge. And it drained them.

“It drained both teams, and we didn’t have to have a game in midweek.

“It was a really significant game, it had a physical impact on the players, and they’ve gone to Barcelona to face a team who are fresh off a 2-1 defeat and getting slated in the press.

“They have the return of Neymar, Suarez and Messi for the first time in 140-odd days, who then turn in a performance that was world-class.

“Now they are not going to be happy about that level of defeat, no manager or coach would be, but looking at all the parts of the pie then it couldn’t get any worse.

“So don’t be negative and smash Celtic, how about just saying that there was a lot of pieces of the pie that made that result happen, it wasn’t just the fact it was Barcelona.”