Have you heard the one about …?
So begins many a joke.
Last night, in Glasgow, that went something like this; have you heard the one about Barry Ferguson taking over as Sevco manager? And as we wait for the punchline it dawns on you; there is no punchline. This isn’t a particularly wicked piece of humour. There are people actually discussing this. Thinking about it.
Some of them have the influence to make it happen.
According to some in the media and elsewhere “Barry Ferguson for Ibrox” is not simply a flight of fancy, something being speculated on the forums. This is indicative of thinking inside the boardroom there. This is actually under consideration.
And the thought inspires that kind of surprised – nee shocked – outburst of laughter that often accompanies a beverage shooting out of someone’s mouth and nose and covering a computer monitor or mobile screen.
Could they be so stupid? Are they really this dumb?
Well yes, of course they are.
The idea of finding a Real Rangers Man to take the helm at the club which pretends to be them has been one of the ideological drivers of this all along. If you listen to some of them, that’s why Warburton ultimately failed; he didn’t understand the club or the culture or the expectations of the fans. A Real Rangers Man would know this stuff from the start. No seminars or education would be needed. He would come in “knowing the score.”
This is such a piece of “accepted wisdom”, such a part of the orthodoxy that few in the media or in the game have challenged it as the clear – and deadly – nonsense that it is. Some of the Sevco fans are wholly aware of it, of course, but they are a small minority who is clear on the causes of Rangers’ death and the ways in which Sevco is heading in that direction.
Ferguson is a perfect appointment for those who crave “one of their own” at the helm. The only thing is, he’s a dreadful manager as those who’ve looked into his career in depth will already know. This appears less important to some people than that he has those other credentials, and the same tunnel vision can be seen in those who want McLeish, or McInnes, or a return from Walter Smith or who’ve openly touted the names of John Brown, Billy Davies or even Jimmy Calderwood; these are people who “understand” things.
Just not how to build a football club.
Even the name most of their fans seem to want – Frank De Boer – is linked not so much because of his reputation and his skill-set but because he “gets it” having spent a few months at Ibrox. It’s not clear whether he “gets it” or not, whether he cares about Scottish football and a club that is no more or whether he’s just being polite when asked, but I get the distinct impression that many of their fans see it as a major “plus point” ahead of other things.
What is it these people are meant to “understand” better than others?
What is it they are meant to “get” above and beyond what the average football manager does?
Our mistake – for those who call it that – in hiring Neil Lennon was that he “got it.” It was clearly a factor in hiring Tony Mowbray before him. Ronny Deila didn’t fail because he didn’t “get it.” He didn’t have the experience or the mentality, for all his skills, to run such a massive club at such an early stage in his career. Brendan does “get it” but I would stipulate that his successes at Celtic have very little to do with his affection for the club; he’s done well because he’s a bloody good manager and that’s why many of us wanted him in the first place.
His Celtic connection made getting him easier; it wasn’t why he was hired.
There are “cultures and traditions” associated with that club which a manager would be better off not bringing to the mix. Mark Warburton knew nothing of them, and it didn’t stop him from getting sucked into the vortex. Someone steeped in them already would simply increase this club’s detachment from reality and elevate the paranoia inside the walls.
Some of those whose names are closely linked with the job are well known proponents of the Victim Myth; that what happened in 2012 was the fault of everyone else, and not so much the responsibility of the club itself. Dangerous attitude.
The Real Rangers Men are also those most at risk of falling into bad habits and old ways; they will be fully subscribed to the idea of spending money to solve problems, to answering every criticism with the cheque book. That might have worked back in the “grand old days of yore”, when someone else was paying the tab, but it certainly won’t work now.
This stuff matters.
It matters to us as much as them, although there are Celtic fans who will kick and scream blue murder at the very suggestion of that.
A Real Rangers Man in the hot-seat over there would be hilarious and cause chaos at the club and for that reason I would laugh and enjoy the show, but it would also ramp up the rhetoric and the hate to a brand new peak. It would raise expectations amongst the fans momentarily, but the crash to reality would be all the worse for it.
The Real Rangers Men are the ones who corrupted our sport and who cheated it, and our club.
Only one of them has ever openly admitted that and none have shown remorse. McLeish declared, quite openly, that he would have been unable to afford the players he had, and thus won the trophies he did, without the use of EBT’s, but he has never acknowledged that it was wrong to have done so. He appears to have believed they were just another weapon in the arsenal; in other words, he was willing to do whatever it took to win, no matter how dodgy.
I’ve had enough of these people and their sense of entitlement, their arrogance, their notion that the club at Ibrox can dominate other teams simply by existing at all. Football is a meritocracy; success has to be earned by clubs, it doesn’t come as a right.
Scottish football doesn’t need a “strong Sevco”.
It needs a sane one, because so much of the media bows and scrapes to the whims from Ibrox and so many people at the top of the sport think of the club as essential to the game here. That gives its criminal chairman, King, license to do whatever he likes, and consequences be damned.
Last time, we all ended up paying those consequences. Our game was talked down, nearly burned to ashes, and its financial value and credibility were trashed. We’re now emerging from that time, and clubs are thriving again, all but one, the one that learned nothing, gained no perspective, the one forged from the twisted metal of Rangers crash and burn.
The next manager at Ibrox can’t be cut from that cloth. It would be brutally funny, but it has the potential to harm the game.
In light of that, the spectacle of Barry Ferguson or someone like him ascending the Marble Staircase isn’t as amusing as it initially sounds.