After the international team from the North of Ireland could only manage a draw last night, and thus crashed out of the World Cup, there was a moment of genuine surreal brilliance when Iain Dowie was lamenting the loss on TV.
“Look at the Swiss bench,” he said, by way of exculpation, “Players from Dortmund, Schalke, Eintracht Frankfurt … whereas ours are from Rangers, Millwall …”
Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather!
Laugh?
That’s an understatement.
It was a moment that summed up the whole hilarious mess their club has become.
Today they are still scrambling around trying to get the manager hunt underway; even Gordon Smith has been forced to admit that guys like McInnes will think twice before taking the job. They are reduced to sifting through a list of unemployables, unemployed and out of reach, what I described last week as a “Who’s Who of Who Cares?”
Dowie’s comments echo those of Mark Bosnich from last week, who I’m sure was trying to be nice when he talked up the prospect of Australian boss Ante Postecoglu being interviewed, but his assertion that the Ibrox club is “not as good as they were” and that his former coach has “ambitions to manager a bigger club (than them)” but would see it as a good stepping stone, were as off-hand insulting to their perceived stature as one could have hoped for.
And this is a sign of the general bleed-out in their credibility. Sevco is not Rangers, of course, but they always believed that by appropriating the name they could invent themselves as a massive institution. The thing is, Rangers’ power was built on spending money … and Sevco has none of that. It was built on ambition and aiming high and Sevco is incapable of mustering the first or even contemplating the second.
Slowly but surely the name Rangers is losing its lustre and its ability to beguile. People know that Sevco is a bust. The shambles over there is obvious to everyone, and soon enough they will have ceased to have any relevance to the outside world beyond their alleged “rivalry” with Celtic … and our club, and our fans, don’t acknowledge that as real.
They’ve had people openly sneer at them since 2012.
This one feel feels different; this one comes from the heart of the royal loyal blue community … and that’s what makes it especially delicious.
Desperate times for them.
It makes me smile.
