Ibrox Gets A Nice Pay-Day But Celtic Has Nothing To Fear From That Dire Side Of Theirs.

So Ibrox squeezed through the crack in the door last night and booked their double header against PSV for the Champions League pot of gold. They made around £5 million in the process, which is a nice chunk of change and perhaps gives them some wiggle room in the transfer market. They will almost certainly look to spend; they can’t abide the idea of saving for a rainy day when there are walls waiting to be pissed against.

When you’ve been doing this job as long as I have it’s hard for anything to really surprise you anymore. But the poverty of talent, and the appalling tactics, of the current club at Ibrox have managed to do exactly that.

I listened to the BBC commentary team, including James McFadden, who has surely twigged that kissing up to Ibrox is the way to keep his gig, with incredulity as they praised the second half performance.

But for their high balls into the box, I don’t know where a goal was going to come from. They have signed three strikers in the summer and all of them look like they play with two left feet. Danilo’s miss from an open goal was extraordinary. Dessers might have hit the post with a shot, but he looks cumbersome and out of shape.

Their fans were promised fast flowing football. It flows the way long-ball punt up the park football has always flowed. There is little movement off the ball and little interplay on the deck. Their whole approach is based on having bought big guys they can lump the ball up to. It’s 1980’s stuff, and a better team last night would have blown them out like a birthday cake candle.

Surely PSV won’t lose to this lot for the second year running? That should be the kind of thing that managers get sacked for. If they are even semi-competent, they will heap two humiliations on that Ibrox team either side of Ross County which send The Mooch into the game against us genuinely fearing for his job, and his players shell-shocked and exposed.

On another night they might have been out. Servette, who are no great shakes, not by any manner of means, could have beaten them had they possessed a little composure. They spurned two excellent first half chances, including one at 1-0 to virtually tie up the second. They were woeful in possession though, and looked suspect at the back, which should give you a hint about how bad the Ibrox club were that they managed only a draw.

But that draw was enough. Ibrox gets the money and the double header against the Dutch who warmed up nicely with a 7-2 win on aggregate against Strum Graz. They are more than capable not just of beating the Ibrox side by inflicting the football equivalent of a punishment beating, and they might not need to be particularly brilliant to do it.

Those two games will take place around an away league game to Ross County which the Ibrox club needed like a hole in the head. Malky Mackay will give them a game up there, a proper blood and thunder match which Ibrox will have to play like a cup tie or risk the match against us being a must-win encounter with no room for error at all.

I have no fears about our ability to deal with them that day. They do not look impressive. They do not look like the sophisticated unit their fans were promised and which the media has been expecting to see. They are a mess.

They look disjointed, fragmented and some of them seem scared out of their wits.

They should be too, because whilst they look to all the world like a team fumbling about in search of its identity, we know ours, we’re familiar with the taste of victory and we’re just warming up.