One Celtic Victory Is All It Took For The Ibrox Club To Come Apart.

This morning, The Daily Record reports that the Ibrox club is driving a wrecking ball through its own scouting operation, including the sacking of almost all of its current staff as they move to a “data and analytics” driven model.

That they haven’t done this already astonishes me. It’s not cheap or easy to do either, and our ability to do it right depends on having exactly the sort of scouting infrastructure they are about to take apart.

One does not work without the other. They never do understand these things.

The Record is at pains to point out, on the club’s behalf no doubt, that this is not a mere cost cutting measure. No, of course not. It just so happens that this will be one of the primary benefits of it though, which is exactly what I mean.

Every single thing they do over there will now swing into a mode they should be familiar with; cutting to the bone.

Austerity is coming to Ibrox in a big way. Well, they have to recoup this summer’s transfer losses somehow, right? Because that’s the other part of this which has become obvious; inside the club they do consider this entire summer “rebuild” to be a write-off. They are ripping it up and starting again. They are admitting that The Mooch has trashed it.

This story, coming hot on the heels of the one by Chris Jack, laying out the story of the transfer window, convinces me that The Mooch is now on death watch. He’s on a three-year deal, so doing the deed and getting shot of him will not be cheap, but as I said last night there are two costs to consider here, and the cost of doing nothing might be too high a price to pay.

Of course, it limits, in a big way, the sort of manager they can bring in.

But the drum beat cannot be ignored. The papers are actually throwing names around already, and I wonder if that too isn’t inspired by those inside the club, in the hope that he can read the writing on the wall and decides to walk on his own.

He shouldn’t. They gave him a three year deal and if he’s not up to it that’s their hard lines for being so stupid … he should dig in his heels and go in his own good time, or force them to fire him.

Of course, it was up to us, he would be in that job for the next five years. But we aren’t going to get that lucky. That club is ripping itself apart again right in front of us, and although they will claim that this is a form of progress it’s really not, it’s really only teeing up the next big disaster, because these people are prone to panic.

Imagine upending your entire club inside of a week because your rivals came to your ground with a depleted team and beat you?

This is not just short-sighted, its plainly suicidal.

Nothing can save that club from its worst enemy, which is itself and the arrogance that surrounds it. The worst thing ever to happen to the club from Ibrox was that assumed the identity of Rangers.

It could have been free of all this pressure, all this baggage, if it had only started on a clean slate and vowed to be all it could be instead of fixating on us. Until it learns that, it will never grow.