Fear & Loathing at Motherwell: Ibrox’s Hippy Dippy Weatherman is off to a great start.

Study almost any crisis and you’ll see that the end is in the beginning.

What does that mean? It means that all the hallmarks of a crisis are usually visible from the start. Nothing truly new ever emerges from these situations—not really. Crisis comes about because people act according to their nature, and organisations act according to theirs. That’s why some of them seem stuck in a permanent doom loop.

And if we are watching the disintegration of a brand-new Ibrox regime, then all the elements that are going to matter—the stuff that will ultimately bring about its end—are almost certainly already in place.

Take the Brugge game. A pre-season friendly that ended 2–2, but in which the Ibrox club went two goals down early on.

I wrote at the time that they had heard the soundtrack of the future—and that the new board would do well to listen closely. That soundtrack, of course, was the sound of booing. It rang around the ground at half-time and told people everything they needed to know about how little tolerance, how little patience, their supporters have right now.

They’ve been living in our shadow for a long time. They’ve been perennial underachievers. And they’ve had enough of it.

The decision to appoint Russell Martin is, frankly, incomprehensible. There are managers you just know are a good fit for a club. And then there are ones who clearly are not. He’s not. And he never will be. Everything about him is wrong for that job. Nothing about him suggests he’s going to last long.

Their fans had made up their minds almost before he was through the door. The mere mention of his name gave them cold sweats. None of them could understand why those rumours weren’t just allowed to die. I think many of them feared the worst—and the worst is exactly what they got.

If you watched the two games against Panathinaikos, the signs were all there. The Greek side should have beaten them over both legs—they were the better team across both matches. But their finishing was so dreadful it was absurd.

Yesterday, it looked for a while like Motherwell’s own wastefulness in front of goal might be what saved Ibrox. But give a team enough chances, and they’ll take one eventually. You could see it coming a mile off.

At full-time, the boos rang out from the away end. Their supporters already know this is going to be a long, challenging—possibly brutal—year. If things at Celtic feel a little off right now, it’s only because our board hasn’t got its act together off the park. They’re draining what little patience Celtic fans have left for their penny-pinching, amateurish behaviour—and I’m not even close to being done talking about that yet.

But Ibrox’s problems? They’re exactly where they’ve always been—on the pitch.

Any manager who picks Kieran Dowell and James Tavernier in a match like that, when neither of them should be within a country mile of the starting eleven, deserves what he gets. And that would have been bad enough.

But what elevated this into Banter Years territory—after just one game—was that press conference. That astonishing, self-immolating press conference, where the manager trashed his own players in language so brutal it sounded like it came straight out of a flamethrower.

I talked about this last season when Ferguson did the same thing. A manager really only gets one shot at that. He gets one chance to unleash hell on the dressing room—and he has to hope it works. It’s a move born of desperation, and a lack of a better plan. And if you’re already there after one league fixture? You’re in deep trouble.

Because if it doesn’t get a reaction—what’s left for you? Where do you go from there? What tools do you have left in the box?

It was astonishing. Not just the fact of it, but the fact that it seemed to be aimed at very specific players. Players the manager has hinted want to leave. And that’s the natural consequence of overhyping them all summer, talking up their value, inventing stories about interest, and then failing to cash in. You create an atmosphere where players think they’re being denied their moves—and stop giving 100%.

Credit to Celtic for this, at least: before we let it be known a player will be allowed to talk to people about a possible move, we make sure there’s actual interest. Enough of it that the deal can happen, and it doesn’t become a problem if the player has to stay. The Ibrox model seems to be to whisper into ears, talk up the price, and then pull the rug. No wonder the mood is turning sour in that dressing room.

All three of their competitive performances so far have been awful to watch. They’re not a good side. Not even close. They got away with it against the Greeks because the Greeks couldn’t finish their dinner.

But they’ll face better sides this season—far better—and if they persist with a backline that soft and that disorganised, the results could be humiliating.

At full time, the old familiar song rang out—one syllable, loud and clear. “Boooooooo …”

As I said in the Brugge piece, that is the soundtrack of the season. And when it comes, you know you’re watching a manager who is in painfully over his head. A manager with no goodwill to draw on, and a support that’s already sharpening the knives.

Incredibly, the man himself seems to be going out of his way to make his life as difficult as possible. No-one rational throws his players under the bus like that, far less takes the keys and reveres over them himself just to make sure they got the point. It is one of the most astonishing opening day moves I’ve ever witnessed … and the sure sign that much more hilarity is going to come over there.

Welcome to League Season 25/26. And for Ibrox fans, it’s déjà vu.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

But probably not going to last as long.