Scottish Fitba In Europe: Bad - Worse - Worser

KUDOS TO the players of Aberdeen and Hibernian on Thursday. It was akin to a limbo dancing competition, after The Bigot Brothers showed how low they could take the bar in their European matches on Tuesday and Wednesday; but, somehow the Dons and the Cabbage and Ribs did their bit for diddy-team fitba by going even lower.

I obviously didn't see any of the Hibs game, but, on TV, Aberdeen were in full Tom Cruise mode: Mission Impossible – let's be worse than Rangers were.

What do the players do all week? The lack of basic skills, the inability to make a half-decent pass to an unmarked team mate – even assuming the passer had identified the recipient as being unmarked, I've seen better team-work in a Primary Three inter-class game in a school playground.

For much of the game, the Romanians appeared to have drawn a 25 metre radius semi-circle around their goal, and massed on the periphery. There was acres of room down both flanks, but, not once did the Dons send a wide man to the bye-line to cross or cut the ball back. The few crosses they did fire in, from about 30 yeard out, were meat and drink to the visiting defenders. Quantity, yes, Quality, forget it.

The passing and ball movement was laboured; the Aberdeen display was a classic example of how bad Scottish Fitba has become. If you're going to be as poor, you might as well whistle-up 11 guys from the Pittodrie Bar, they'd be just as ineffective as these agents-supplied foreign mercenaries are proving to be.

Who's running Scottish Fitba – Private Frazer? Because he appears to be wriging this season's script: We are all doomed!!!

MY BROTHER'S late class-mate Billy “Bongo” Smith MBE is a legend in Ayrshire fitba, for his on-field exploits with Cumnock and Lugar Boswell Thistle, for his grass-roots work at Cumnock Academy, where he was Head Janitor for many years, and with Ayr United. The Burleys, George and Craig, Billy Dodds, Derek Stillie, Brian Gilmour, plus scores of top-class Juniors, many are the players Bongo nurtured and encouraged over the years.

Bongo played in a promotion-winning Sheffield United team and in the old English First Division – what is now the Premiership. I remember him saying, after returning from a reunion of the promotion-winning team at Bramall Lane, how one of the veteran club coaches had asked him: “Bongo, what are you teaching these young boys up in Scotladnd now. You Jocks used to come down here demanding the ball, seeking to dominate games, the kids we are being sent down today barely want the ball – what's gone wrong?”

Another great past player for whom I have a lot of time is St Mirren and Dundee United legend Jackie Copland. I enjoyed a good few educational chats with Jackie in his time as General Manager at Love Street.

One day, we were discussing a less than stellar display from a then highly-rated St Mirren striker in the weekend's game. Jackie was particularly ill-disposed towards the player who, truth to tell, was more revered on the old North Bank, for his prowess as a “Shagger” around town than from his goals.

Jackie was particularly blunt in his assessment: “Watch him when we're defending; he's tight onto the man marking him, holding one arm up as if he's wanting the ball – it's all show, if he really wanted the ball, he'd be in space, not tight to a defender.”

The truth of that statement came back to me watching Aberdeen, they had a lot of players, some in acres of space, quite clearly not wanting the ball. Too often, Aberdeen players in good position were ignored, the simple forward pass was overlooked in favour of a square or backwards ball.

Two questions:

1. What are our coaches being told on coaching courses – does nobody preach attacking football these days?

2. What happened to make the ball do the work?

Scottish fitba, both domestically and in Europe is going backwards – third question:

Does anyone inside Hampden care?

 

Rangers: "We're Shite, But We Know We Are". Celtic's Response: "Here, Haud Ma Buckfast".

THE DOGS on the street know this current Rangers' squad is “a poor team”; they know few if any of the players are “Rangers Class”; no Scottish commentators – and fewer normal fitba fans - were at all surprised that they slumped to defeat against Club Brugge. Even so, the team and manager were rightly vilified for what was a rank rotten show on Tuesday night.

But, in the final analysis, nobody was in the least surprised that a poor Rangers side should lose to a little more than competent Belgian outfit. So, how come Celtic are not getting more pelters for failing to defeat their opponents from Kazakhstan on Wednesday night?

I mean, on-paper, this was a “good” Celtic team, at Fortress Parkhead, facing unknown make-weights, this game was generally seen as an easy home win for The Hoops – so why no disgust in the press afterwards?

OK, Celtic's defending was nowhere near as bad as Rangers' had been the previous night, but, at least, Rangers, poor as they were, managed to score in their game. Now, I admit, for all their defensive excellence on Wednesday, Kairat Almaty will have to show a bit more in attack in their home leg, which might open-up some chances for Celtic to hit them on the break, but, at this stage, Celtic progressing is not a done deal, far from it.

Much of the post-match comment swirled around Brendan Rogers' somewhat cryptic comment around: “chants of sack the board generally mean – sack the manager”. The current crop of Scottish Fitba writers seemed to have difficulty working out what this meant – allow this old fossil to explain.

I recall, some decades ago, the late, great Alistair MacLeod, reacting to a particularly voluble rant from perennial Ayr United critic - “Enclosure George Reid” by saying: “as long as George and his ilk are calling for the Manager's head, that manager is safe; but, once they start directing their ire at the board, the manager's jacket is on a shoogly nail, because, directors do not like criticism”. Rogers, on Wednesday night, was merely underlining the perennial wisdom of Ally's remarks.

There was a lot of post-match chatter too around Celtic's need to purchase full back cover, should Alastair Johnson's injury prove long term – this merely shows how bad Scottish football has become.

I first got interested in fitba in the mid-1950s, not a particularly fruitful time for Celtic. Their right back was Mike Haughney, who had won his only Scotland cap, against England in 1954. When Mike retired, he was succeeded by the young Billy McNeill, gaining experience at right back, while the great Bobby Evans had taken over from Jock Stein at centre-half.

Then, when McNeill finally inherited the number five shorts, in came Dunky McKay, who went on to win 14 Scotland caps. He in turn was replaced by Ian Young, a Scotland Under-23 cap, who in turn gave way to Willie O'Neill, before the order of succession went Jim Craig, David Hay, Danny McGrain. The Celtic management of the time had no need to enter the transfer market for a replacement, should a first-team member be injured or transferred, the replacement was already in-situ, learning the ropes in the Reserves.

Mind you, the Celtic Reserve team of those days - “The Quality Street Gang” as they were known, were a wee bit better than fourth – behind Linlithgow Rose, Clydebank and Bo'ness United in the Lowland League; so calling up a reserve might not be an option. However, Anthony Ralston, who will slot-in for Johnson is, with 21 Scotland caps and over 120 first-team games for the club, hardly a novice.

You might think by now, the business model of recruiting third or fourth-rate non-Scots into the Scottish game, a model which has never worked, might by now have been confined to the archives – but still, every Scottish club, from Celtic down, stands by it. The very definition of madness.

 

Oh Dear! Oh Dear! Oh Dear! - Disaster For Rangers (Again) : As David Francey Might Have Said

NOBODY HAS used the formation since before the last brown, steel-toe-capped Manfield Hotspur boot was built, but, British teams are still listed in a 2-3-5 formation. Indeed, for most of the history of the game in this country, the more usual team formation was 3-4-3. The players in shirts 2-5 and 3 just defended; numbers 4-6-8 and 10 did the fetching and carrying between defence and attack, while numberes 7-9 and 11 were there to score goals and worry opposition defenders.

Then, in the 1960s we went to a back four and over the intervening years we have seen all sorts of formations tried-out. But, through all the turmoil and changes, one thing has been a near-constant in Scottish Fitba – Rangers tended to have the players who, above all else, knew how to defend.

From the pictured Tom Vallance in the 1870s, via a progression of Edwardian greats, to Davie Meiklejohn in the 1920s, on via Jimmy Simpson, to Willie Woodburn and George Young and Co in the legendary “Iron Curtain” team. Then came John Greig and Ronnie McKinnon, Derek Johnstone and Colin Jackson, Tam Forsyth and Richard Gough, Davie Macpherson and Alan McLaren – it was almost de rigeur for the national team to have at least one, if not two Rangers men at the back.

 

 

Think too of the full-backs who helped keep the goals intact: Dougie Gray, Jock “Tiger” Shaw, Sammy Cox, Eric Caldow, Sandy Jardine. Playing for Rangers meant, conceding a goal was a serious personal affront.

Most of those players now watch from the great dressing room in the sky, but those who are still with us: Greig, Gough and the like, what must they have thought of the desperate defending on-view in Tuesday night's latest Ibrox European Disaster? Maybe The Europa League is the right level for Rangers FC 2025, in which case, Club Brugge did everyone a favour by confirming, the current squad is totally inadequate for The Champions League; better to find out now, before they found themselves even more compromised by having to go head-to-head with the clubs in the big boys' playground.

This season, so-far, the theme song has been: “the cry was no defenders”. As I survey the wreckage of the start of this Rangers' season I am reminded of a tale from my youth. The above-mentioned George Young, Captain of Rangers and Scotland, announced he would retire at the end of season 1956-57, leaving the club with a huge gap to fill, not least in the number five shirt.

So, Manager Scot Symon did what his predecessor, the great Bill Struth had done on numerous occasions – he went to Hampden and recruited centre-half John Valentine, a Scotland Amateur cap and a young man who looked as if he could develop into a player able to succeed Young and Woodburn – who had been suspended sine die.

Sadly, the job was beyond Valentine and after he was cruelly exposed by Billy McPhail in the legendary “Hampden in the Sun” League Cup final of 1957 – won 7-1 by Celtic, Valentine was dropped and quickly off-loaded to St Johnstone. Young reserve Willie Moles, who was only 20, was promoted to fill the void, sadly, after a serious head knock, he was mis-diagnosed as suffering from MS and eventually let go, having played only five first team games.

Rangers then bought the experienced veteran Scotland internationalist Willie Telfer from St Mirren. Telfer, from Larkhall, was a Rangers' supporter who steadied the ship as Rangers recovered to finish second in the League that season, behind a great Hearts team, with Celtic in third place.

Valentine suffered one horrific day at the office, Moles was very-unlucky with his injury while Telfer was a stop-gap; but, I reckon any one of the three was better than some of the defenders out there this season.

A song from The Music Man comes to mind here: Glasgow is a city on a river, so, clearly, for Rangers: “You've got trouble, right here in River City”. With another nod to that musical, maybe they should have stuck with the ”boy band”; although, a team, managed by a former Scotland central defender, unable to do the basics of defending, that's a serious problem.

Football Management 101 states quite clearly, you secure the back door first – when will that message get through at Ibrox? I wonder.

Back in the early 1980s, when I was first told by my Sports Editor: “Get thee to the Hunnery” - that particular Partick Thistle fan's way of telling you, you were at Ibrox on the Saturday, the joke was of a design flaw in the rebuilt ground: “They built it with the seats facing the pitch”. Many of those seats were vacant on a Saturday, I can see those days returning if things don't improve soon.

Any way, the Brugge game was so bad, I opted out at half time and watched an episode of the Netflix series on the Dallas Cowboys. Even with minimla footage of the Cheerleaders, it was more-entertaining than the fitba.

Then, this morning, on Facebook, I had to relive Kris Boyd's latest mental break-down – see, it's not all bad.

 

Ibrox - You Have A Problem

ONE OF MY OLD neighbours, a man who had given a life time of service as player then committee-member, not to mention supporter, to our village's Junior fitba team shocked me one day, when he announced, because of his wife's failing health, they were moving into sheltered housing in nearby “Scumnock”.

“Steady-on Big Yin,” I cautioned. I recognised him moving to that place would automatically double the average IQ of the populace, but, feared for his long-time survival. Correctly too, he was struck by a particularly virulent strain of Dementia and was quickly headed for that great Junior field in the sky.

We take our Junior Fitba seriously here in God's County, local rivalries are not to be treated lightly. My big pal worked all his life in construction and he would suffer raised eyebrows in the tea hut on say the building of one of Glasgow's peripheral housing schemes when, in answer to the question: “Whit team dae you support Big Yin?” he would answer: “Glenafton Athletic”.

This almost always brought the supplementary: “Naw, naw Pal, whit team dae ye really support?” The questoner, invariably from either Greater Glasgow, or somewhere along the M8 corridor, clearly felt there were but two possible answers – to offer a third or fourth: say “Ayr United” or “Kilmarnock” and there was still a degree of disbelief.

Truth to tell, since God's County of East Ayrshire is occasionally referred to as “Orange County” there is a presumption of pro-Ibrox leanings across most of us natives; indeed, I can honestly say, if my old Alma Mater, the soon to be demolished “real” Cumnock Academy – the one at the foot of Barrhill for any fellow Academicals reading this – had had a school song, then that song would have been: “The Sash My Father Wore.”

Given that mythology, I was somewhat nonplussed when my eldest daughter's “Bidie-In” informed me on Sunday that efforts to give away free tickets for Saturday's Rangers v Alloa Athletic around his work-place in Cumnock met with more refusals than keen grabs. He also reported one “Bluenose” as saying: “No thanks, there are guys getting' a geemme wi' Rangers the noo who couldnae get a gemme wi' the Talbot.”

Given this scenario, I trust the Daily Rhebel's Sports Editor has the cracked Rangers crest graphic close to hand, ready for instant insertion into a page plan.

I watched the live broadcast of that Rangers' game, if only to confirm my long-held belief, there are guys on the park who never have been, are not and never will be: “Rangers Class”. It's embarrassing. Mind you, for as long as the troughers along the sixth floor corridor at hampden allow our clubs to flood their squads with third and fourth-rate non-Scots and ignore home-bred Scottish talent, then they are only hastening the day when the Scottish clubs are losing to clubs from the minor European leagues in the first qualifying round of the three European competitions.

Next up for Rangers is Club Brugge, at Ibrox tomorrow night. Now we Scots have a low opinion of Belgian football – always have. BUT – at International level, we have played the Belgians 20 times, we've only won 4 of these games and we haven't actually beaten them since 1987.

In European club competitions, Belgian and Scottish clubs have been paired together 36 times. The Scottish club has won 19 of these meetings – so hardly a ringing endorsement of our game being better. I should add, the only Scottish teams to have beaten a Belgian club this century are the usual suspects. I am not confident about Rangers' chances in this tie; so far in Europe this season, they have been “winning ugly” - I envisage another difficult watch tomorrow night.

I AM CURRENTLY working my way through Manchester City supporter John Leigh's biography of Bobby Johnstone – written in 2007 – some six years after Bobby's passing.

 

 

Bobby Johnstone died at a time when Manchester City were very-definitely the second team in their city. They had yet to move to The Ethiahad, Pep Guardiola's arrival and global domination was still a decade or more away. Perhaps, given the hype which has surrounded latter years City, Johnstone is now, to present-day City fans, perhaps a case of: “Bobby Who?” OK, he's seen as arguably the fifth member of Hibs; Famous Five; the last to join the club, the first to leave, but, his record deserves perhaps more credit than he has been given.

Google Bobby Johnstone, his carteer statistics will surprise you. His Scotland career lasted a mere 18 games, over five years, yet he scored 10 goals for the national side, while mainly playing as a midfielder, albeit an attacking one. We have lauded Scottish international strikers who have failed to match his 0.55 gols per game international scoring record, far less his overall record of 0.41 gpg (227 goals in 552 games). He never played for Scotland in a World Cup, after injury kept him out of the 1954 tournament – indeed, his entire career was blighted by a series of knee injuries.

However, he played for a Great Britain XI – scored in successive Wembley cup finals, when that game was the highlight of the English season – by any measure, Bobby Johnstone thoroughly-deserves his place in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame.

Bobby was 21 when he won his first Scotland cap, 26 when he was last capped. He won 13 of his 18 caps as a Hibs' player 5 with Manchester City. OK, his knee problems were already starting at the time of his final cap – the 1-1 Hampden draw with England, in April, 1956. However, it could be argued, he had more to give Scotland when his services were dispensed with.

However, back then, in the days of the Scotland team being chosen by a Selection Committee, it was far from uncommon for a player, capped while with a Scottish club, to quickly become useless once he was sold to an English one. Bobby himself always believed, since he had had a “difficult” relationship with Hibs' Chairman Hugh Shaw, it was no surprise that his selections for Scotland ended as soon as Shaw became SFA President.

The Johnstone biography is a tale of a bygone age, when the game in England was virtually run by Scots, but when players were woefully under-rewarded for their talent and treated as serfs by their clubs. The game has come a long way since then, and not always for the better.

 

A Kiss Fae Pele - And She Deserved It

ELSIE COOK and I have three things in common:

1. We are both Baby Boomers

2. We are both from Ayrshire

3. We have a shared love of fitba and Kilmarnock FC

Where we differ is – Elsie judges every team against Killie's Championship-winning side of 1965, I think (allowing for the fact some players are common to both) the 1960 Scottish Cup Runners-Up side was superior.

 

Elsie has also made a far-greater contribution to Scottish Fitba than I have. She is, without doubt, the Godmother of Women's Fitba up here and the way she has introduced hundreds, perhaps thousands of lassies, including arguably Scotland's Greatest Ever Player – of either sex: Rose Reilly – to the game means her belated but richly-deserved induction into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame deserves a standing ovation from a packed Hampden.

Elsie has also just published her autobiography: 'A Kiss Fae Pele' – it is a cracking read, which I unashamedly boost here. Buy it, read, it tell your friends, this is one of the best books, far-less sporting autobiographies, you will read this or any year.

We Baby Boomers get the blame for a lot – we invented the teenager; we brought Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll to Scotland; we broke through glass ceilings, tore down old monuments and generally caused mayhem and chaos. We have aged disgracefully and we are mostly, still rocking and rolling.

Elsie, in sight of the big 8 0, even, by publishing her story, breathes life into a near-dead language, Lallans, or, the auld Scots' leid. Like those of us brought up in wee Ayrshire toons and villages, Elsie has always been bi-lingual. We were forced, often on the wrong end of a “Lochgelly” to speak and write English at school. But, out in the schyl-yerd and beyond, we spoke virtually the same dialect as had made Rabbie Burns legendary, after John Wilson published his 'Kilmarnock Edition' of “poems mainly in the Scots dialect”.

'A Kiss Fae Pele' is mainly written in that dialect – because they are Elsie's own words and that's how Elsie speaks. Fortunately her co-writer, Tom Brown, has included a glossary of the Scots terms at the back, for those who dinnae speak it. Getting the book published is also a penance for Tom, like me a Cumnock Academical, who went against the flow, by supporting Auchinleck Talbot and Celtic. Not many of the school's alumni follow either path.

The story of Women's Fitba in Scotland is a hard one. The SFA, under Willie Allen, then Ernie Walker, were still holding-out against the monstrous regiment of women after the rest of the world had capitulated. Elsie was a Mary Queen of Scots figure, facing down unruly male Barons in her efforts to have the lassies allowed to play. Then, even when permission was given, some of the sisterhood turned against her. However, belatedly but rightly, her place in history is assured.

The book is not all about the battles for women's fitba. It is a look into a lost world, when weans in Scotland were not tied to their 'phones and devices, when we had the freedom to roam the countryside, making our own fun and free to grow-up as we wished. There are stories of the roller-coaster life of being KITD: “Killie Till I Die”; lots of laugh-out-loud moments, there are sad moments too – there are tales of the long-ago Wembley Weekends and of foreign excursions which did not go to plan and, of course, of the stratagems which had to be employed so lassies could play fitba.

It is a cracking read and it comes hard on the heels of another eagerly-anticipated memoir, Sir David Murray's. Of course, given his connection with a certain Glasgow football team, David's book has grabbed most of the media attention, but, of the two books, each written by someone from Ayrshire, it is the less-hyped Elsie's tome which I enjoyed more and which resonanted better with me.

Given the richness of the Lallans dialect, this would make a terrific talking book. I know Elsie does not keep as well as she might, and in any case is, I understand, not keen to take-up the challenge, but, a talking book or podcast version, narrated by someone like another great Ayrshirewoman, Karen Dunbar, who spoke the language, would be a sure-fire winner. Also, I can see the basis of a terrific film in this book.

Galston's Billy Kay is the current keeper of the flame of the auld Scots leid; I am sure Billy will love seeing Elsie's book published, helping as it does to keep the language alive. I simply loved seeing guid Scots words I hadn't heard or used in years, such as fankled, foonert, galivant, keek, to name but a few.

'A Kiss Far Pele' is published by Brownbross Publishing Edinburgh and can be purchased online from www.tombrown.online. The book costs £22 plus postage and packaging.

 

A Dinosaur's View Of The New Season's Opener

  

SINCE I HAVE owned a Thomlinson T-Ball and a pair of light-brown, hard-toed, leather, nailed-in studded Manfield Hotspur boots, I suppose I can be dismissed as a dinosaur. But, I did have the first pair of Puma boots in Scotland – pre-dating Pele, and had a pair of white boots a couple of years before Willie Henderson – who wore them long before Alan Ball. So, I am not immune to novelty and innovation.

 

However, I find myself at a loss trying to make sense of current management models – this current fashion for titles such as: Director of Football, Technical Director, Head of Football Recruitment and so-forth. I find myself wondering what the past managerial giants of Scottish Fitba would have made of having to work with, far-less answer to a suit with a big title and an oversight role.

To look at another sport and arguably the most-successful sports team on the planet – New Zealand's All Blacks. The ABs have a Head Coach – Scott Robertson, who makes the big calls, however, the whole ethos of the team is that they are a TEAM, park your ego at the door of the dressing room, all for one and one for all and, if you cannot agree to these parameters and buy-into the group culture, you are not going to be there for long.

Folk-lore/Legend tells us, when Rangers had a virtual monopoly on the Scottish titles, Bill Struth was God, but, he was barely seen by the players. He laid down the parameters and the ground rules and left it to the Trainers and the Senior Players to run things. I remember a conversation with the great Eric Caldow, in which he told me: “When I broke into the First Team, George Young was the Captain, but, he was more than that, he was player-manager. Mr Struth wasn't in the best of health, but, while he still picked the team and was very much the man in charge, George was the Manager in the dressing room – and we would have run through a brick wall for him.”

That Rangers' team was choc-a-bloc with Managers. Bobby Brown,Ian McColl and John Prentice went on to manage Scotland; Willie Waddell won domestic and European titles with Kilmarnock and his old club; Willie Thornton and Young had successful spells in club management: Johnny Hubbard didn't go into club management, but his MBE was as much for his grassroots coaching with South Ayrshire Council as for his excellence from the penalty spot.

Billy Williamson coached at Queen's Park, and was a much-respected Head of PE at Lenzie Academy, while Harold Davis, another team mate of Caldow's also had a spell coaching at Hampden; although, to be fair, Iron Man Davis was a Scot Symon signing. With that amount of football knowledge, the Manager's job is easy.

That apparently, is not how Russell Martin is finding things, even this early into his Rangers' career. I fear for Martin – his team was, as they say in Glasgow: “jammy” in the extreme in beating Panathinaikos at Ibrox. They then took jamminess even further in the second leg in Athens, before, if not crashing and burning, coming down to earth with a serious bump at Fir Park on Saturday.

I decided to watch the game and, by mid-way through the second half, it was clearly only a matter of time before Motherwell pulled back Rangers' early lead. I don't know how much input Martin has had in the summer recruitment, but, from what I have seen in the three televised matches I have watched, Rangers are going backwards faster than that mythical Ferrari-engined Italian tank from WWII.

Here's a suggestion for Manager Martin: invite a team of former Rangers' stars up to the training ground to take on the current squad in a five-a-side tournament, say: Gregor Stevens, John Brown, Lorenzo Amaruso, Jörg Albertz and Terry Hurlock – a few minutes facing that lot and the new boys would have an idea what it meant to pull on a Rangers' strip.

Some are suggesting, Martin may already have: “lost the dressing room” - I fear he may not yet have found it, and he has to do that quickly.

To be fair, I ought to have watched the other half of the Bigot Brothers start their campaign on Sunday. However, there were rival claims on my attention – an intriguing Formula 1 race in Hungary, an even more nerve-shredding run chase in the Test Match at The Oval; so my remote was in danger of over-heating as I flicked through the channels. In the end, the Cricket won – talk about sporting drama.

Apparently, it took Celtic 87 minutes to get the inevitable winner against St Mirren, Season 2025-26 could be a long one in Scotland. I wonder if Aberdeen and Hearts can offer us hope when they collide tonight.

Mind you, I did notice one interesting fact as I reviewed the weekend action. The West of Scotland Football League is being led by Auchinleck Talbot. Played 3, Won 3: ok, winning a league is a marathon rather than a sprint, but, maybe, just maybe, after last season's rebuild, Tucker Sloan and his squad have rediscovered their mojo.

They have rebranded the old Scottish Junior Cup this season – who better to be the first winners of the new competition than the serial winners of the old one?

 

Until We Become more Royston Vasey We Will Be Roy Chubby Brown

IT IS DIFFICULT to assess the relative general personalities of the Scottish version of Capulet and Montagu, Hatfield and McCoy, Earp and Clanton – the warring tribes which Andy Cameron wonderfully named: “The Dibs and The Dobs”.

On reflection, maybe because they have over their club's history, had a marginally harder paper round to work, I would say “The Celtic Family” - although often a family at war when those septs knows as The Kellys, McGinns and Whites held sway – is perhaps the better-balanced; which may have something to do with having a chip on both shoulders.

Certainly, over the past 60 years PSR – that's Post Stein's Return – they have accepted the occasional set-back with more grace than their friends across the city.

Right now, as we limp into a new season – the piecemeal manner in which we re-introduce the new campaign merely under-scores how few working brain cells there are along Hampden's sixth floor management corridor – Rangers, on the back of scraping past Panathinaikos on Wednesday night, seem to be in control of the narrative, but, the way we now get each new season going, it concerns me.

Of course, and like John The Baptist, I have been a voice, crying in the wilderness, for years – but, I fear, Scottish Fitba is broken, unless radical changes happen soon in its governance, irrepairably broken.

• We haven't been to a World Cup Final Tournament since 1998 (7 tournaments and counting)

• We have never got past the group stages in a World Cup Finals (8 tournaments and counting)

• We have never been past the group stages in a European Championship (4 tournaments and counting)

• Our qualification percentage in the World Cups is 8/17 – 47.06% qualified

• Our qualification percentage in the European Championship is 4/16 – 25% qualified

• Our overall qualification percentage in the two main tournaments is therefore – 12/33 – 36.36%

• We haven't won one of the three major European club trophies since 1983 – 40 seasons and counting

• Excluding the European Super Cup – we have won just 3 European club trophies – from 182 campaigns since 1955-56 – that's a success rate of 1.65%. It's actually worse than that, since in some of these campaigns we have had multiple entries

• In total, Scottish clubs have won only those three above-mentioned trophies, from 238 entries in the various European club competitions. That equates to a wins rate of 1.26%.

• Overall, to the end of last season, Scottish clubs had played 1476 competitive European games, of which we have won only 613 – 41.53%

• In all, 21 Scottish clubs have qualified to play in European competitions and of these, only two, Dunfermline Athletic and Falkirk, have achieved a 50% wins ratio.

Take those three European trophy wins:

1. Celtic – European Cup 1967

2. Rangers – European Cup-Winners Cup 1972

3. Aberdeen – European Cup-Winners Cup 1983

Thirty-four players got on the park to contribute to those three victories – EVERY SINGLE ONE WAS A SCOTSMAN. Indeed, of all the players listed on the official team sheets for the three games, only one – unused German substitute goalkeeper Gerry Neef in the Rangers squad was not Scottish.

If we could win European tournaments with all-Scottish squads, why are we persisting in failing to feature with squads which hardly include a single Scot?

There were just two Scots in Rangers's starting line-up in Athens this week; while new boss Russell Martin seems intent on following the same signing policy as hasn't worked in over a decade – loading the squad with non-Scots.

Now, I am not advocating they go back to signing boys whose idea of off-field fun is to drive down Larkhall Main Street, the car windows open blaring out Orange Anthems from the stereo; or having FTP written on their shin-guards. These days are past – but, the club will continue to trail behind the other lot, for as long as they don't have a solid spine of “Real Rangers Men” who know how to dig-in and win the 50-50 games – the luck which got them past the Greeks will not last. The team in Athens started with a mere two Scots – not nearly enough.

Take the Hibernian team which fell at the first European hurdle on Thursday night. Their starting XI contained just three Scottish players, plus two Republic of Ireland and two Australian players, and one each from England, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Wales. Hibs' current first-team squad lists 25 players, of whom a mere 7 – 28% are Scottish. It's a good thing for the Easter Road board that Nigel Farage isn't a Hibbee – or they'd be getting extreme pelters for their recruitment policy.

Now, I am not saying Scottish Fitba fur the Scots only – it would be churlish to have denied us the sight of the likes of Henrik Larssen, Claudio Canagia, the de Boers, Brian Laudrup, Mixu Paatelainen, Guðmundur Torfason, Marko Rajamäki or Jose Quitongo to name just a few of the exotic imports who have brightened-up Scottish Fitba. But, that said, I feel the introduction of Chick Young's “eight diddies rule” whereby a Scottish team could only field three non-Scots at any one time, would go a long way in getting Scottish Fitba back to where we all want it to be.

There does not appear to be a coherent player development strategy in our game; our clubs do not appear to trust home-grown Scottish talent and until they do, or are forced to pro-actively promote and encourage Scottish kids – we are only going backwards.

Let's look again at those three winning sides in Europe, and how they were put together:

Celtic 1967: Ronnie Simpson (bought from Hibs); Jim Craig, Tommy Gemmell, Bobby Murdoch, Billy McNeill, John Clark, Jimmy Johnstone (developed by Celtic), Willie Wallace (bought from Hearts), Stevie Chalmers (developed by Celtic), Bertie Auld (developed by Celtic, sold to Birmingham City and bought back), Bobby Lennox (develped by Celtic). 9/11 home-grown.

Rangers 1972: Peter McCloy (bought from Motherwell), Sandy Jardine, Willie Mathieson, John Greig, Derek Johnstone (developed by Rangers), Dave Smith (bought from Aberdeen), Tommy McLean (bought from Kilmarnock), Alfie Conn (developed by Rangers), Colin Stein (bought from Hibernian), Alex MacDonald (bought from St Johnstone), Willie Johnston (developed by Rangers. 6/11 home-grown.

Aberdeen 1983: Jim Leighton, John McMaster, Doug Rougvie, Neale Cooper, Alex McLeish, Willie Miller (developed by Aberdeen), Gordon Strachan (bought from Dundee), Neil Simpson (developed by Aberdeen), Mark McGhee (bought from Newcastle United), Eric Black (developed by Aberdeen), Peter Weir (bought from St Mirren), John Hewitt (developed by Aberdeen). 9/12 home-grown.

So, 24/34 – 70.59% of the players who have won European club competitions playing for a Scottish club were home-grown. Every single player was Scottish. When did we stop believing in home-grown Scottish talent, more importantly: WHY?

I look at how the High Heid Yins in our clubs do things now and as Rabbie wrote all those years ago: “and forward tho' I cannot see, I guess and fear”. That sentiment now applies, more than ever, to the future of Scottish Fitba.