Last night on Radio Clyde, Chris, one of our Facebook team, got on and gave a good shout-out to the blog and to the Group.
(You should all join us if you haven’t already, at this link here.)
I downloaded the show this morning because I missed it, and I wanted to hear what he had to say.
What I found in the early part of the show was a discussion about the greatness of OldCo Rangers, a dissertation of a horrible book written by Archie Knox and Roger Hannah (I will not be rushing out to buy it), the moronic sense of humour of their former Geordie joke and the need for Sevco to appoint a Real Rangers Man as manager.
Chris’ excellent questions about the Many Lies Of Dave King and the tapping up of Derek McInnes were the only genuine moments of serious debate.
Amidst all the nonsense was that discussion about who Sevco’s next boss will be.
Chris got it right when he said that there’s been a clear effort to unsettle McInnes using the media and ex-Rangers players. If McInnes walks the club won’t have to find the money for him; that, clearly, is what some at Ibrox would prefer and are hoping for.
In the meantime, the history of the past two bosses was dredged up and raked over again.
Mark Warburton and Pedro Caixinha were criticised for “not getting it.” For “not understanding the size of the club.” The thing is, I think both Warburton and Caixinha did understand the club, and the size of it. They understood it very well in my view.
What Sevco really needs are fans who understand it.
Let’s be honest; the Celtic sites milked the Warburton and Caixinha terms for all they were worth.
But we weren’t slagging those guys – well, we were slagging Caixinha because he was, frankly, mad – as much as the pretensions that surround them. Had the club, had the fans, kept their expectations in check there would have been nothing to report.
Mark Warburton got them to third in the league and two cup semi finals. They were beaten in those semi finals by the team that ultimately won the competitions. For a club in its first SPL season that was a triumph. Why wasn’t it supported as one?
Pedro Caixinha got to a cup semi-final. His team was competing for that second spot. Indeed, they weren’t far off Celtic in terms of points. Yes they exited from Europe to a team from Luxembourg, and that was the worst result in Scottish football history … but other Scottish clubs have suffered humiliating European exists to relative minnows. Brendan’s first game in charge was a defeat in Gibraltar, the worst individual result in Celtic’s history.
Had Warburton been judged by the standards of other newly promoted managers he would certainly have kept his job, and been regarded a success. Had Caixinha been judged by the standards of other foreign appointments at other Scottish clubs he would have been given more than seven months.
People compare his time to that of Le Guen at Ibrox; that doesn’t stand up at all.
Le Guen was a guy who came to Ibrox with a huge reputation; they were entitled to expect great things from him.
Caixinha came with no pedigree to speak of. He was always going to need time to get things right and whilst it would only have gone on hilariously bad I think the club’s behaviour will be seen outside of Scotland as rash and ridiculous.
It’s actually no less rash and ridiculous inside Scotland.
This is the third manager hunt since King took over with this “restore the glory of Rangers” nonsense.
Rangers was built on debt.
Sevco is a mid-table team playing out of a huge stadium they can’t afford.
The comparisons are ridiculous. Both Warburton and Caixinha were forced by circumstances to play a game which neither believed in, which was to go along with this idea that they were at a mammoth club that “should be winning every game.”
It’s nonsense, contemptible, dangerous, nonsense.
Sevco has been performing exactly as one would expect them to, especially if one removed the directors loans which have allowed them to spend more than they can afford. Reduce them to the point where they were forced to break even and you would see, very quickly, how a large stadium and high annual running costs can eat into that season ticket money pretty fast, and how small the gap between them and the likes of Aberdeen actually is.
The Record is not usually a paper I would look to for information, but they did a piece yesterday which outlined the average length of time players stay at SPL clubs; at Celtic it was almost three and a half years, making us the second best in the league after St Johnstone.
That has brought true stability to our ranks, and is part of the reason for our success.
At Sevco the number is much lower; the average time a player stays at their club is, incredibly, 1.08 years.
A little over 13 months, the second worst.
It is this stat which stands out.
This is why their squad is currently filled with dross. Their club is like a revolving door for crap … crap goes in, sloshes about inside for a while, and exits shortly thereafter. But rather than acknowledge that they’ve had to operate out of the bargain bin, those players face impossible expectations and even more impossible demands. No wonder they bring so many in and ship them out again as swiftly. Putting a blue jersey with a Rangers crest on it over a sub-par footballer does not make him a better one. This “winning mentality” nonsense only applies if the players have the skills to back it up, and the majority of their signings are nowhere near that.
Incredibly, in every other way they behave like a small club. They act like a small club. They are spiteful, petty, nasty, amateurish. Yet they put this enormous pressure on the people inside the walls to prove they are “up to the job” of representing a massive institution, as if they actually were a massive institution.
And this pressure all comes from their supporters, and this notion of superiority.
Yes, the board is filled with this too, but it comes from the stands.
The media feeds it.
The club does not discourage it.
So it grows and grows, locking them into a vicious circle.
That’s where the real change has to come at Ibrox; from the fans.
They have to understand their limitations. They have to learn tolerance for where they are right now. But that will never happen. It’s why the next manager, whoever he is, before he’s even appointed let alone managed a single game, is already a dead man walking.