Ibrox fans, I think the words you’re looking for are “Oh good grief …”

There’s a wonderful West Wing moment that I often think about on days like today. It comes when the President calls Leo McGarry, his Chief of Staff, into the White House Situation Room to watch a ballistic missile defence test.

In the show, Leo McGarry is convinced the test will be successful; the President is equally convinced that it won’t be. But he attends the test anyway—not with any expectation of being impressed, but simply to make his point.

The test fails, of course. When McGarry asks how close the shell came to hitting the missile it was targeting, he’s told it missed by over 100 miles—something he initially mistakes for feet. Not that it matters; if you miss a ballistic missile by 100 feet, you might as well miss it by 100 miles. The outcome is the same.

On the way out, the President turns to Leo and says, “I think the words you’re looking for are, ‘Oh, good grief.’”

It’s a reference to Peanuts.

On the way to the meeting, the President had told Leo the story of how Lucy would hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick and, every time, she’d pull away at the last moment, Charlie Brown would miss the ball and it would leaving him flat on his backside.

And yet Charlie kept trying, convinced each time that this would be the moment Lucy wouldn’t trick him.

I’ve never been much of a Peanuts fan, but I’ve always been tickled by that image of Charlie Brown running up to kick the ball, only to land on his backside. And those immortal words, “Oh, good grief.”

It’s the perfect distillation of gullibility and futility—a beautiful, succinct image.

It should be obvious by now who it reminds me of.

And I ask myself, over and over again: why do they do it to themselves? How can they do it to themselves? How can they delude themselves so often into thinking this time they’ll kick the ball, that this time something won’t snatch it away at the last moment, leaving them looking foolish yet again?

If they were capable of any self-analysis, they’d recognise the pattern and stop. But as we often say here, “It’s the hope that kills them.” As long as they have hope, they’ll keep making the same mistake, driven by demons we cannot understand—demons that push them into these ridiculous situations. Hope, then, is the real enemy. Hope that this time, Lucy will let Charlie Brown kick the ball. It never happens.

Being a Celtic fan has taught me many things, but over the last 15 years, patience has been the most valuable lesson.

In 2009, I wrote an article entitled The End of Rangers? I knew something terrible was going to happen to that club. It didn’t happen for another three years, but the numbers didn’t lie. The financial consequences of the subprime mortgage crisis were being felt worldwide, and I knew the markets David Murray was involved in were being pummelled from every side. The chances of him holding his empire together were somewhere between slim and none.

By that point, they were so dependent on his financial largesse that they could never cope without it. So, I knew dark days lay ahead for them. I had to be patient, even as myself and others repeatedly pointed out their perilous situation and were dismissed as crazy—by their fans and even some of our own.

But when you know, you know. You must trust that you’ve read the data, understood it, and that the consequences you foresee will prevail. If you’ve ever watched The Big Short, you’ll know the guys who bet big against the housing market endured the same scrutiny, the same doubts, the same ridicule. But they trusted their analysis. They knew what was coming, bet big, and won.

It’s similar here. Those of us who have watched the Ibrox club closely this season, who’ve seen nearly all their live games, know exactly what they are. We know they’re unimpressive, unreliable, and weak in key positions. We know their manager is clueless. So, every time the hype machine gears up, every time the media talks about revivals, recoveries, and turnarounds, we know all we have to do is wait. “Wait a while,” we say. “We’ll see. We’ll see who’s really turning things around.”

The media in this country doesn’t make it easy. As Tom Petty said, “The waiting is the hardest part.” They make it harder by endlessly banging on about how good the Ibrox club is getting during these fleeting moments of misplaced optimism.

But that makes it all the sweeter when moments like this come along—moments of amused contemplation as you look back on the last few weeks and see how it’s all unravelled. Yesterday, in Paisley, was one of those moments.

Everything is different. For a start, no one fears them anymore. Every club knows they’re vulnerable, every club knows they can be beaten. That knowledge emboldens every team that comes up against them.

They’re now facing a major rival that is better organised, better managed, richer, and more successful.

They’ve been well and truly put in their place, yet they still don’t seem to grasp it.

Supremacy? Yes, there’s still an element of that arrogance, an element of that egotism.

But let’s not kid ourselves—there’s also an element of sheer stupidity.

They’ve convinced themselves that a couple of results against modest clubs and taking a cup final to penalties against a Celtic side well off its best somehow represents a giant leap forward, a great stride of progress that would fix everything. This despite failing to change a single one of the underlying fundamentals.

That’s why yesterday was inevitable. All we required was patience.

We just had to wait.

Their fans showed up at that game full of expectation, riding high, their minds already leaping ahead to January, where they imagined the gap would be cut to six points. They saw the new year as the start of the greatest comeback ever seen. And they believed every bit of it.

I can picture the shocked expressions on some of those faces as they left the ground yesterday. I think of Charlie Brown lying flat in the dirt, staring up at the sky, wondering how he could have been so stupid, how he could have let himself fall for it all over again.

And I can imagine that silent, sullen, angry trudge back to the cars, the trains, the buses. Those fans heading home, many of them too stunned to speak, unable to process what just happened.

Guys, I think the words you’re looking for are: “Oh, good grief.”