Fear And Loathing In Cyprus: “We’re On An Express Elevator To Hell … Going Down …”

James Cameron knows how to make movies. Say what you want about some of the cringier elements of his films, aside from his debut – Piranha 2- he makes quality.

Other directors might turn in the visual equivalent of the long punt up the pitch, but Cameron never does.

His masterpiece is Aliens, and there’s a moment in that film which is especially applicable on a night when the future of Ibrox took another shocking turn.

I said this morning that it was typical of them to be sniggering over our garden fence when their own house is in a riotous state and tonight reality came sweeping over them like the tsunamis which rise up at the end of Cameron’s criminally under-rated gem The Abyss, threatening to drown every coastal city in the world.

It comes when the remnants of the colonial marines are locked up tight in the operations facility on LV-426.

Their entire mission is a blown catastrophe; three quarters of the team is dead. The aliens have proven far more formidable than their worst nightmares could have conjured up. The marines who are left suspect that Burke, the company man, is not playing it straight. Worst of all, their dropship has been destroyed, their weapon supplies are running pitifully low and no rescue can be expected for seventeen days.

So they make their little redoubt. They conserve what they have. They put their sentry drones out in the corridors and hope that they can hold back an alien swarm. And once they’ve made all the preparations they can, they settle in to count down the days until the relief squad comes in and gets them the Hell out of there.

And everything goes wrong. Because the dropship crash has damaged the cooling system of the entire facility, and it is overheating to the point where it will soon explode, in a multi-megaton detonation which will obliterate the colony, the aliens and the marines in one blinding flash of light. “How long till it blows?” Hicks, one of the marines, asks Bishop, the techie, the android, with a sort of resigned sigh. “Four hours,” is the answer he dreaded.

So the time they thought they had is gone. The seventeen days which had sounded such a long time to Hudson, another of the marines, has been replaced by a need to move, to move fast, to move without a real plan, improvising every step of the way. From a less than ideal situation, the remnants of the team are suddenly in a nightmarish one.

Well tonight, Ibrox suffered a reversal every bit as bad, and they lost the one thing they genuinely had on their side, which was time. Time to think and ponder the kind of club they want to be. Time to examine the managerial candidates available to them and to make sure that they got the best of what was already not a great selection.

That’s not happening now. Tonight, the luxury of that was snatched away, and if you check their forums tonight that will be crystal clear. Seventeen days would have been a reasonable timeframe for them. Instead, I think they might be down to the bare minimum. 48 hours. 72 hours. They have a massive game looming at them out of the shadows like a mugger, a match against a St Mirren side who will give them every bit as big a test as the Cypriots did tonight, and I think there’s a very real chance that they will try and have someone in for it.

No-one is that daft though. But they dare not return after the international break without an appointment, that’s for damned sure. There will be no process in which they whittle down the candidates list. The caretaker bosses – the hilarious double act of Davis and Rae – have been every bit as shambolic as we all thought they might be as we sniggered over the appointment of the uber-staunch at the weekend and how it was greeted by the fans.

They’ve dropped the ball at the first time of asking, and in such a fashion as guarantees the fury in the stands.

“How long until it blows?” is not applicable here at all.

Check the forums. Buddy, this is already blown.

That club dare not leave them in charge a minute longer than necessary.

The clamour for a swift appointment will reach a crescendo. The board knows it should take time here, they know this can’t be a knee jerk decision. But it will be.

I sincerely hope they enjoyed their wee moment last night, because harsh reality, in all its gory glory, has slapped them hard in the face tonight in Cyprus.

That is one of the worst results that a Scottish club has suffered in continental competition in years, the worst since the shambles their team endured against Progres Niederkorn. It could only have gotten worse for their fans had Alex Rae jumped out of the bushes, like some raised-from-the-dead stalker to offer them some staunch reassurance. (I apologise to anyone I’ve inadvertently given nightmares to in conjuring up such a ghastly image.)

The scale of their crisis has now come sharply into focus, and the more sensible of their fans realise that any manager who comes in right now is going to be cursed to work with a squad which has already chucked it, and which is a talentless shower who look as if it was thrown together by a rank amateur Football Manager player working his way down the transfer list without knowing what any of the player data numbers mean.

The best thing for them to do would be to write this season off completely, League Cup and all, and plan.

Plan for the season after it.

Do their due diligence. Put the manager hunt off until they have a comprehensive strategy, including the hiring of a director of football, which they are going to do after they appoint a new boss? That’s utter madness of course.

But like the colonial marines looking at the sparks and flashes of light emitting from the fusion system which is melting down with four hours left, these guys don’t have the luxury of that because the fans will simply not stand for it.

They wanted Beale out, although this massive game was coming up.

Now they want the temporary bosses sacked.

And they’ll get what they want because they always do.

Any new manager who comes in over there at this crisis point, right at rock bottom, their lowest ebb since Pedro was strutting his stuff in those bushes outside the stadium in Luxembourg, will have to face hard times.

And as I ponder that, it’s another moment from Aliens which comes most readily to mind; the marines strapped into their seats as the drop-ship is about to begin its free-fall descent to LV-426 where the aliens are waiting.

“We’re on an express elevator To Hell,” Hudson says, “Going down …”