Celtic’s Potential Champions League Reward Is Why Ibrox May Be Forced To A Hasty Decision.

Today amidst all the stuff about Scotland, there are two stories which run almost parallel to each other. One is about us, the other is about the club across the city. As we all await (with varying degrees of patience) the resumption of league business, calmly working away in the background, there is clearly some turmoil at the club across town.

Let’s be honest, it is impossible to know what that turmoil involves, how serious it is or what might happen. But we know several things.

First amongst them is this; the board is now openly briefing against the manager in terms of his transfer business. Chris Jack has the full “inside story” of how the transfer window played out, and he could only have gotten that from club insiders who are determined not let The Mooch wriggle out responsibility by saying that the transfer policy hampered him.

Their fan podcast, Heart And Hand, has already called it “a mess” and that would be to put it mildly. So there are problems inside that club and they are very obviously big ones. The Champions League exit hurt them. But we have inflicted what already looks as if it might be a killer blow on The Mooch and his beleaguered backroom time.

What makes the board briefing against The Mooch particularly significant is that it comes on a day when Celtic sites and the mainstream press are talking about what next season’s Champions League pot of gold will be worth for whoever wins the SPFL.

There is no question that this money will be game-changing in how it will give enormous spending power to the side which wins the title. The leap from what we are guaranteed to make, just in terms of prize money for merely getting there, from £16 million to nearly £29 million is a next level jump in earnings which they simply cannot afford to let us get.

Because the tournament has a strange seeding system, the chances of getting money for points is also currently greater than it is right now, as are the rewards if your team finishes in the top eight or in the bottom section which contests a two-legged playoff; that’s another chunk of change for whatever team gets to this grand prize.

The Ibrox board looks at this and knows that if we get there and they don’t the gap might open so wide that closing it will be nearly impossible, perhaps for years to come. They know they cannot afford to have that gap open up … and so winning this title is critical. It is probably the most important league title since we stopped Rangers’ ten … vastly more significant than our own tilt at a ten in a row, which would have been tremendously symbolic but ultimately worth little in real terms. These kinds of earnings would create an opportunity for us to strike a decisive blow, and at a time when we would be playing regularly in the biggest competition on Earth it might even be easy to bring that better class of player to the club.

We know we are heading for a European Super League of some sort, although those who doubt that it will be under the watchful eyes of UEFA are howling at the moon. Everything we do now Is about laying foundations – financially, corporate, politically – for a seat at the top table when that days comes, and this is the kind of money that can help us get there.

The chances are that there will be only be one seat at the table for a Scottish club. We know that’s us, we know it has to be if the project is to be treated seriously … but we could be so far in front of them by the time it comes around that even discussing it will seem daft. You can see the thinking in the creation of the league system for this … the number of games will only grow, and once they start eliminating knock-out rounds you’ll know it’s here.

When you look at it like this, when you recognise that this is a campaign you can’t afford to lose, you understand our appointment of Rodgers, and you understand why they are so concerned over there all of a sudden that The Mooch has squandered millions and might be on the cusp of a complete team breakdown. And that begs the question; at what point do they act to try and prevent that, even if there is no obvious candidate or if it reeks of panic?

I’ll tell you what has become obvious in the last week; there’s no way back for him in the eyes of the fans. Their minds are made up, and if the doubts have spread to the boardroom – as they evidently have – then he’s already on managerial death row.

I know this; they can’t afford to simply wait for things to get better. If those doubts have now coalesced into solid form their board will have to decide what to do. The lack of a viable candidate is only one part of their problem; if they pay someone big money to come in and fix this, and that person fails, they might be in even deeper trouble.

But eventually they have to sit down and do the cold calculus; is the risk which is obvious in doing nothing greater than the risk taken by ripping the plan up and starting again? If Celtic does get that next pot of gold and we shown even a shred of ambition, we might be over the hills and far away before they can even start sorting themselves out.

So where, for Ibrox, does the greater danger lie? It’s a question that pleases me to contemplate, just as it must scare the living daylights out of them.