Look at that picture; Brendan with the treble.
The league is the one we all expected to win most. The others are the domestic cups, and our record in those hasn’t been great in recent years.
It’s hard to win the domestic cups nowadays.
Ask Sevco fans. It’s been six years and they have yet to do get their hands on either.
That’s just one part of what makes Brendan’s success so astonishing.
Over on their forums a cold hard realisation is finally starting to dawn; this might go on and on and on and on for years to come. Those who are trapped in this dark moment are entirely correct to fear such a thing. It is the literal truth.
And I don’t mean simply that it might be years before they challenge Celtic; let me be blunt. We might never see that again in our lifetimes. No, I mean they might never again be considered a club that consistently challenges for honours.
Sevco is six years old. From the moment of their birth we were told that this was a club that was capable of winning a major trophy. In their first season. That level of delusion is hard to credit. It’s all well and good sitting here in hindsight saying that it was folly, but some of us said it was folly right from the start. When McCoist was building a team on SPL wages to compete in the bottom tier, we said that this was a nonsense.
And so it proved. But every year it got worse.
The Sevco team has been rebuilt five times in that period. Think about that. McCoist did it twice. Warburton did it twice and now Caixinha has done it. They are no closer to success in this area than they were when this all started.
Sevco has one a single domestic cup competition – the Petrofac Cup – and they did it at the fourth time of asking. Their fans assume it is a matter of time before they win one of the big two, which is what sets them up with a tilt at the title.
They could not be more wrong.
I would stipulate that Sevco’s chances of winning a major trophy are much the same as those of any other team aside from Celtic. It may happen once in a blue moon, but it will not be anything more than a combination of factors like that which propels a Dundee Utd or a St Mirren to the same; lucky draws, games where they catch a top team unawares, favourable results in other matches … random chance, in other words.
The most successful Scottish Cup team outside of Glasgow in the last 20 years is Hearts, who’ve won it three times; once every seven years, on average. Is it because Hearts do something right? Something better than other teams?
No, it’s a freak statistic and Sevco doesn’t look remotely like achieving that sort of consistency.
They look so far from challenging for top honours that you can only conclude that the threat will emerge from elsewhere, perhaps from Edinburgh but more likely from the north of Scotland. Hibs gave us a game at the weekend. We will see what Aberdeen are made of come Wednesday night.
But it could not be more clear that Sevco is a busted flush.
The task in front of that club is no longer about catching us; they won’t do that with all the bluff and bluster in the world. It’s about keeping up with those clubs around them. Motherwell’s manager said he knew his side were physically and mentally stronger … other teams will come to realise that in time and then the real downslide begins.
The simple fact is, all three of the semi-finalists in this year’s tournament would have been too good for Sevco and that on top of their relief at seeing Aberdeen going out, who would almost certainly have been able to handle them at the National Stadium.
This is what they are now, a team aspiring clubs want to play and know they can beat.
This weekend was not a shock.
It was the shape of things to come.
Their fans better get used to these barren years.
Other clubs fans accept that as a matter of course; that’s all Sevco is now.
Just another struggling side.