Ibrox fans are condemned to more of Mad Phil and his Death of a Thousand Cuts.

On Saturday, 21 November 2020, I had one of my worst moments supporting the club, probably since the 90s. We were 2-0 down at Easter Road in a month where we were floundering, clearly headed for some sort of total disaster, in a season that was already unravelling.

The two-goal deficit wasn’t unexpected. Something like this had been coming. Many of us had already grown tired of the excuses being made for Lennon and wanted to see the situation brought to a head.

The 10-in-a-row campaign could have been saved at that point, but even then, a lot of us doubted that it would be. We were more focused on what state we’d be in the following season if action wasn’t taken swiftly to put us in the best possible position for rebuilding.

The 2-0 result I could have handled. What happened in the last 11 minutes of that game profoundly disturbed me—not only because it happened, but because of how I felt about it. We turned the game around, snatching an equaliser deep into injury time. Diego Laxalt scored the goal.

The 2-2 draw allowed Lennon to get in front of the media and praise the spirit and determination of the team. And I knew then that disaster had only been postponed. Worse, I knew that the disaster was now likely to be several orders of magnitude bigger because the crisis had been averted that afternoon. I didn’t have to wait long to be proven right.

Sparta Prague had already beaten us 4-1 at home in the Europa League. Days after that 2-2 draw, we went to the Czech Republic and lost 4-1 again. But that was nothing compared to the shockwaves that were sent through the club by what came next—the home cup knockout against Ross County, which demolished any lingering hopes of a successful season and sparked an outpouring of public anger from fans… and this at a time when the country was in lockdown.

That day at Easter Road, watching the game, I felt that the club was caught in a doom spiral. I thought we were in real trouble. I thought the campaign had already started to come apart. Lennon had thrown the whole team under the bus weeks before, and there was just this overwhelming sense of doom hanging over everything. That afternoon could have brought matters to a head. In hindsight, it wouldn’t have—but it would have ripped the blindfolds off for a lot of people before the events that followed.

Watching the Ibrox club absolutely toiling today, having spent most of the game under the cosh against Hearts, yet coming out with a 3-1 victory that will allow Clement to bait his critics and claim that a corner has been turned, I know that their support is feeling the same profound sense of despair I felt that afternoon when Diego Laxalt smashed the ball into the net. This should be over. And yet, it’s going to go on and on.

And let’s state the obvious—they’re in a much worse position now than we were then. Theoretically, at the time of the Hibs game, that draw kept us in the title race. We were well behind in the league, but we had two games in hand. If we’d won them, the gap would have been cut to just five points.

Of course, you can tell by watching your team whether they’re capable of overturning that kind of margin, and I knew we weren’t. I knew we weren’t in a good place. But the opportunity was still there. We hadn’t quite thrown it away yet.

Eight days later, with the League Cup exit confirmed and another two points dropped in the league just around the corner, the sense of a doomed season had properly set in across the wider support. But we still had competitions to play for.

The Ibrox club now doesn’t. And so listening to James McFadden and others trying to spin today’s result into a significant win—when it was nothing of the sort—is hilarious. But not for Ibrox fans.

Anyone watching that game today with enough detachment knows that on another day, they might have taken an absolute hiding from Hearts.

Hearts were the better side for most of the game until the self-inflicted injury of the third goal—the second own goal of the game from James McCart. When you’re relying on two own goals to survive a potentially disastrous result, you’re riding your luck. And luck is all that’s keeping Philippe Clement afloat right now.

I’m not even going to get into the performance of the officials, particularly those on VAR. I’ll let that be picked over in the aftermath and await Willie Collum’s inevitable statement of apology to Hearts for the penalty they should have had in the lead-up to Ibrox’s second goal. Because it was a penalty—blatantly so.

How that wasn’t even reviewed a second time by John Beaton, I do not know. I do know why he didn’t spot it the first time, though.

For Ibrox fans who wanted a swift and sure end to their misery, today is a disaster. In a sense, it’s as bad as the result that knocked them out of the Scottish Cup last week. It’s a fig leaf for Park, Bennett, and their manager to hide behind.

It will allow them to continue making excuses. It will give Clement more time. And it will set up the next calamity to hit that club like a sledgehammer. Although nothing could possibly be as damaging as the Scottish Cup exit to Queen’s Park a week ago today.

I used to think, watching Michael Beale, that he looked like a guy who had been sitting down for dinner and, by some black magic, had suddenly found himself standing on a touchline in a tracksuit as the manager of the Ibrox club. He had that look on his face sometimes, like he wasn’t even sure how he got there. Clement had that same look today—a man who not only wished he were somewhere else but couldn’t believe where he was and had no idea how it had come to this.

I’ve seen managers get by on luck.

I’ve even seen managers turn their situation around based on luck. Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good. It’s a common thread in football history. A lot of managers have been saved by it. This guy won’t be.

Luck will not deliver him from the position he’s in now. And nobody watching that today could think he deserved a victory, far less the reprieve for another seven days—or however long it lasts.

And because I remember what it feels like to be physically sick when your team benefits from an enormous slice of good fortune, as we did that day at Easter Road, I know exactly how their fans feel this afternoon.

Those who went into this game hoping that the misery, pain, and certainty of further humiliation would be brought to a swift end—only to now have to endure it even longer. To be condemned to watching more of that shocking brand of what passes for football under that manager. To have to endure the suffering that comes with winning meaningless dead rubber games knowing it strengthens the manager’s hand, along with the inevitability of future defeats which you know in your heart are coming.

That hurts like hell. And I wouldn’t wish them anything else. I’m going to drink down their tears. I’m going to drink down their pain like it was the finest wine.

Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images