Fear and Loathing at Ibrox: Ferguson gets mad as the project starts to unravel.

Last week I posted a piece on the Ibrox club where I talked about the movie Paper Mask, starring Paul McGann as a hospital porter. He’s been around the doctors so long that he can speak the lingo as well as any of them. When a doctor in the hospital, Simon Hennessy, dies in a car crash, McGann’s character is sent to clean his room. There, he finds a letter inviting Hennessy to a job interview in Bristol.

McGann digs out Hennessy’s old school tie, gets himself a suit, and goes to the interview… where he gets the job.

Now he has to be Simon Hennessy. Now he has to work as a doctor. Now he gets to see how far his borrowed knowledge can carry him. And I’m sure you can guess that this scenario comes with one or two complications.

But here’s the thing—his character doesn’t kid himself. Matthew Harris is a porter. And at one stage, he sits down with his guitar and sings The Great Pretender, because that’s what he knows he is. He knows he’s bluffing and bullshitting his way through. And he knows, sooner or later, the rent is going to come due in a big, big way.

Today it came due for that other great pretender, Barry Ferguson. Ferguson has been kidding himself for weeks that he’s got a shot at being the Ibrox boss. But as I said in the aftermath of the Celtic game, this is a guy who’s had his moment of glory. He’s had his career high. And from here on in, it’s all downhill.

Either he gets the job on a permanent basis, brings the average life expectancy of an Ibrox boss down by about six months, and it all ends in disaster—with the fans who once cheered his name now booing him off the touchline every week. Or he doesn’t get the gig at all, and the people who give it to someone else brand him a loser, an amateur, a pretender. And he’ll have to live with that for the rest of his life.

His future is shrieking into the void, one way or another. That’s what he’s got to look forward to—and it’s a bleak existence mapped out for him. I’m glad it is. Because I can’t even pretend I have the slightest bit of liking for the guy. I don’t. I wish him nothing but the worst of everything. And that’s exactly what he’s going to get.

I read with great hilarity the media comments last week where Ferguson’s cronies, chums and enablers were spouting the usual nonsense about how the players “raised their game” to come back against Dundee because they didn’t want to face him in the dressing room. Honestly.

And if you saw his interview tonight, all red-faced and raging, talking about how he’s not going to accept that performance—well, not for the first time, I wondered what exactly he thinks he’s going to do to motivate these footballers. What can he do?

He can shout all he wants. He can slam the walls. He can even try to get physical. Not that he’s stupid enough to do that, because these are grown men who will not tolerate that kind of nonsense. But at the end of the day, they all know something he’s apparently forgotten—at the end of whatever bollocking he gives them, their wages will still be in the bank, they’ll still leave the ground in their shiny sports cars, and go home to families and lives in which he plays no role whatsoever.

They know something else too. Those players who intend to remain at the club beyond this campaign know full well that the likelihood is that he won’t be there. So it’s not as if they’re playing for their futures under him. Most of them couldn’t care less.

There’s an old adage about players trying to outlast the manager. In this case, every single one of them who’s on a contract that runs past the summer knows they’ll outlast this manager. He’s a temp. And not one who’s doing particularly well.

In short, he can resort to all the scary mumbo-jumbo he wants, but everyone in that dressing room knows what Barry Ferguson is—a failed manager from Clyde, a former tabloid columnist, and that’s about as seriously as they’re going to take him. That’s about as much as they’re going to care.

Today’s foot-stamping press conference was full of the usual bravado, about how he’s made changes but he’s not afraid to make more.

But as I’ve said before, and as others have pointed out, he’s taking a leaf out of Matthew Harris’ book. One of the ways Harris gets by as “Dr Hennessy” is by deferring to other staff—the ones who do know what they’re doing. He’ll ask nurses and orderlies—the lesser mortals—for their opinions on things. And it works, because they’re used to being ignored by arrogant, aloof doctors. They like being asked. They’re happy to help. And that’s what, briefly, keeps Harris/Hennessy afloat.

Ferguson’s getting by right now because, for the most part, he’s stuck with the plan of the previous manager. It wasn’t a good plan—but Ferguson thought that by infusing it with a bit of “staunchness” it would all come good.

But the minute he starts messing with the plan, the moment he starts trusting his own judgement, you’ll see exactly why he didn’t last at Clyde. Why he hasn’t lasted anywhere. None of his staff has the requisite experience either, so if they start making drastic changes, the results will be exactly what you’d expect: a disaster.

This is the point in the article where I usually invoke fear and loathing. And both are appropriate here—but in a different way.

Ferguson does not inspire fear in that dressing room. He can’t. There is literally nothing he can threaten those players with. They’re multimillionaires. No one’s worried about him taking their lunch money. No one’s worried about getting shoved up against a wall by this little runt. The whole idea is ludicrous. Who’s going to respect that? What professional footballer thinks that’s how a manager should behave?

So there’s no fear in that dressing room. And Ferguson can loathe them all he wants—that won’t matter either. They won’t care what he thinks of them, because they don’t believe he’ll be there next season.

And although he still has a constituency in the media banging his drum—and they will keep banging it—I think the odds are against him. Which is a shame, really. I’d love to see him get the gig.

The real loathing was in the stands. That was the loathing of the fans who were still there at the end—for their whole club. And many of them think that this magical takeover is going to drastically change the landscape.

But there is no sign of that.

In fact, with the so-called “miracle” at Leeds having taken a bit of a nosedive today, that whole theory of a major transformation at itself at Ibrox doesn’t really hold water. What I see instead are owners being very careful, very frugal, protecting their investment by not doing too much, or going too far.

Look at what’s actually gone on at Leeds. Some of those people have been on the board for seven years. They’ve already been through one relegation. Promotion has eluded them for a couple of seasons. And if you read and listen to what Leeds fans are actually saying, they’ll tell you the best thing about these owners is that they brought in the actual experts—the ones from Red Bull.

That should worry Ibrox fans.

Their club needs a drastic transformation—no question. Because right now they’re a mess. And their fans, daft as they are, have already parted with their cash for the season tickets. They’ve already signed the dotted line—and they still don’t know what state their club will be in when the new campaign begins.

Those with a bit of sense do fear that the outcome might not be the one the Daily Record and the rest of the media are breathlessly predicting. Because right now, they loathe their club. Right now, they don’t even feel good about going to watch their team.

In stark contrast, we have a title to win. Win tomorrow, and we’ll wrap it up next week at home. We’ve also got a cup final to celebrate and another domestic treble on the line. So for us, it’s all upside.

Whatever the situation over there, let me tell you—I take a certain amount of pleasure in the chaos. And far from bringing back the standards, Ferguson has presided over a calamity raised only by a handful of positive results. He should not kid himself. He’s no more a manager than Matthew Harris is a doctor, and sooner or later, given the chance (hope, hope, hope) he will deliver the wrong dose of medicine at the worst possible time and the whole operation under him will disintegrate.

Today wasn’t even the worst that can happen to this guy.