One of my colleagues in Celtic cyberspace, Eric Knott, wrote a very interesting piece today on Kris Boyd, our own village idiot.
Boyd has been discussing what the Ibrox club needs to do to try and catch Celtic. In fairness to Boyd, he’s been fairly sensible over the last month in relation to the Ibrox crisis. He knows exactly what he’s watching, and that crisis is exactly what it is.
Eric took issue with Boyd’s recent comments, mocking them without mercy because, frankly, the concept is a bit silly. Boyd is talking about a 4- or 5-window rebuilding cycle, which essentially means he’s not talking about this season or next, but maybe the one after.
Maybe. Under optimal conditions.
And what would those optimal conditions be?
Well, they’d involve spending a lot of money. Money that the club might not even be able to spend. That’s where Eric thinks Boyd’s comments are completely ludicrous, and I agree with him 100%.
Boyd knows the timeframe required, but he doesn’t know how they’re going to fund it. Worse still, he’s missed another crucial point: the future of the manager. No manager at Ibrox is going to get 3 or 4 years. That’s just madness. If results don’t go their way in the next few weeks, the current manager might not even make it to the end of the season, let alone still be there in three or four years to build a squad capable of mounting a title challenge.
The kind of time Boyd is talking about simply doesn’t exist for any Ibrox manager.
As I mentioned in a previous piece, the fans won’t accept a three-year rebuild. They just won’t. Secondly, with our media the board will never be given the time and space to carry out such a rebuild, especially if it needs to be done cheaply – which is really their only option due to UEFA’s financial sustainability regulations.
There’s another variable too; the future of the manager.
Imagine you’re deep into a three-year rebuild, and it doesn’t look like the manager will get you anywhere close to where you need to be. If you sack the manager, the new one will want to do things differently, starting the cycle all over again. Once more, it’ll be under the same limitations: a rebuild done on the cheap and a process that requires time – neither of which the fans or board have any interest in.
On top of that, Boyd has overlooked another crucial factor, which Ibrox fans likely don’t want to think about either: Celtic’s transfer policy. If Celtic continues signing higher-calibre players – as we’ve done with Engels, Trusty, Idah, and Bernardo – there’s no guarantee we won’t pull even further ahead. If they’re struggling to catch us now, imagine how much tougher it’ll be three years down the line.
Boyd might be talking about a four- or five-window rebuild just to catch us where we are now. But what happens if we’ve moved even further ahead? How will they catch up then, with an eight-window rebuild? The timeframe only grows longer.
This may sound absurd to their supporters, but here’s an idea: how about they stop trying to catch Celtic for a while? How about they focus on simply being the best club they can be without obsessing over trophies and titles? Radical, I know. But it brings me to something I’ve wanted to write about for a while: our success has spoiled us. A lot of people have forgotten what it’s like to follow a club that doesn’t win everything.
As I said in a previous article, we went a horrible number of years without a trophy in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Let me remind you of some unpleasant facts from that period: we had three third-place finishes, a fourth-place finish, and even one in fifth place. We lost the 1990 Scottish Cup final to Aberdeen on penalties and the 1991 League Cup final to Rangers. I remember every one of those painful seasons and the heartbreak that came with them.
A lot of Celtic fans have terrible memories of that time, but it’s important to remember. It’s rare to find a club that wins as consistently as we do. For most clubs in our league, a cup win is a once-in-a-decade event. For others, it’s a once-in-a-generation thing. As strange as it sounds, Ibrox fans can’t assume that their club will ever be dominant.
For many clubs, going through a dry spell is just the reality of football.
There’s an almost universal assumption that the Ibrox club will eventually rise to dominance in Scottish football again, as Rangers once did. But there are two fundamental misconceptions here.
First, the idea that football is cyclical is nonsense. Clubs can have spells of success, but that doesn’t mean they will return to dominance. Look at Leeds United south of the border – their glory days are over, and they’re not coming back anytime soon.
Second, people misinterpret Rangers’ past success. Their glory years, particularly during the nine-in-a-row period, were built on financial mismanagement, bank loans, and mounting debt. We’ve said it repeatedly on this site: that club was an artificial construct.
So, I understand where Eric is coming from in criticising Boyd. No Ibrox manager is going to get five transfer windows. The club won’t sustain any level of spending over that period either. The harsh reality is that they’ll need an extended period to rebuild, but someone needs to level with their fans: this rebuild won’t be expensive, and there’s no guarantee of success at the end of it.
The next few years will test the Ibrox support to the maximum. Every aspect of their loyalty will be scrutinised. What will they do when there’s no hope left? When their greatest rivals are pulling further away with no end in sight?
We’ll soon find out who stays, who buys season tickets, and who really embodies the ‘loyal’ mantra. Some might say they’ll stay because they endured the journey through the lower leagues. But that journey was built on two things: hate and hope.
Once hope is erased from the equation, will hatred alone be enough to sell season tickets? I doubt it.
I too had a chuckle at the prospect of an ibrox manager getting 4 or 5 windows. Even if they set out with that intention, the volcano will erupt and the manager binned. So they start again with some fresh ideas. The new guy will need another 4 or 5 windows to rebuild. They are caught in a loop which keeps bringing them back to start line rather than the winning post.
Just say Clement gets three windows and makes some steady progress. If he looks across the city and we have disappeared over the horizon, he will realise that he is doomed to fail despite his progress. Cue him contacting agent. “Get me out of here!”
As you rightly say James, that is the problem of judging your success by comparison with others. Ange and Brendan both have a similar mantra, shared with Franco Smith, Glasgow Warriors head coach, who took them to the URC title last year. Paraphrased, it goes something like, “We look at ourselves. We set our own standards and aspire to meet them every time we play.”
If you set high but realistic standards and then meet them, you can always tweak them even higher. If you set unrealistically high standards, then you set yourself up for failure. If we keep meeting our high standards, and keep tweaking them ever higher, it is difficult to see sevco overtaking us, particularly if they are constrained to working within the law.
Spot on James…if they had people running their club that firstly, had proper realisation of why they continue to be in a mess!
Then have the nous and wherewithal to acknowledge a change of thinking and strategy, then maybe they could begin a modicum of progress.
Their yardstick can no longer be Glasgow Celtic, the club with an unbroken and hugely successful history.
They should have mourned the cadaver of the old “Ranjurs” when it died in 2012, moved on and tried to build a new vision from the ashes.
Unfortunately, ( for them, not us,) the Sevconites carried on with the reckless and hapless use of funds, in order to try & keep in the same lane as us.
“When you repeat a mistake, it is not a mistake anymore: it’s a decision.”
These decision/mistakes have been made try and appease ‘the entitled!’ That continues to this day, with ‘the entitled’ morphing into ‘ the deluded!’
Their uneconomical practice of spending money they never had, goes way back before Murray etc. Even in the glory days of Stein, The Lions et al, they’d have been spending way above everyone else, with someone else’s cash!!!
Frankly, I couldn’t care less how they try to move forward.
The memories of our barren years, and their boastful taunts will never be forgotten by myself and countless others.
Our continued success and dominance will also never be taken for granted ! HH
Great piece.Everything you said is true and I hope they never heed your advice. Just like they did coming through the lower leagues. They could have won those lower leagues by a point and sorted out the club. And when they eventually got to the big league with CELTIC they would be able to challenge CELTIC. But their sense of ENTITLEMENT WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM
Check out the state of their bench tonight lol, not a chance of catching us.
They’re actually in The Fuckin Lead – So everything in the garden will be rosy once again then…
But it won’t last…
If The Swedes Turn-up and Mash them !!!
In a kinda perverse way The Scummy’s are actually doing other teams a favour (especially us) in hyping up and whipping The Sevco Hun Hoards into a frenzy…
They believe every pathological lie they read in The Scummy’s as gospel…
You can see that every day on Swallow Swallow / Wallow Wallow (Take your pick and delete as appropriate) !!!
James, did you have to bring up the late 80s and 90s? I moved to England in Sept 88 to go to College and all was rosy when I left (the Centenary Double – all my fault then!). The Bunnets contribution to our success since then cannot be understated. Crucially we all accepted the medicine (so to speak) and paid for the prescription. And now we are benefiting from a healthy club (yes with some niggles) with a bright future.
And I’ll be magnanimous on the Europa League tonight and say well done and thanks for all the coeffishients (sorry about the pun).
Be the best they can be & maybe, just maybe they will become a club that sees a little success sometime in the future . I very much doubt that the hatred will ever leave the club & it’s support.
5 or 6 windows prolly constitutes 3 managers in rangers terms.
Can any team afford that. It costs them what they could pay for 4 or 5 good players what it costs to bring in new managers with new ideas.
A few wee wins here and there will keep the majority of the klan in hope and blind faith. Then to turn on the next manager as goals and targets and expectation not met.