IN RECENT months I have let this blog slide, partially because I have begun to despair of Scottish football and the state it has got itself into; but also, because I have been working hard on a series of books which I hope to have published in the near future. However, I have kept abreast of football developments via our much-maligned media and through my secret shame - a devotion to the Rumour Mill on The Scotsman.

For those of you unaware of the Rumour Mill, this is the natural home of the one issue obsessives from both sides of the Old Firm divide. Here, if a single Rangers fan posts that, to his certain knowledge, the world is more or less round - then within minutes a Celtic fan will post that this is bunkum, the world is not roundish, but square, and painted green and white in any case. Then, off the go - tit-for-tat, ad infinitum. Here too you will find the Rangers fan who only posts on Celtic issues, and his mirror image from the other side, who only ever posts on Rangers issues. If this is where we are at, in this 140th year of organised football in Scotland then - We're awe doomed, doomed ah tell ye.

The formation of the SPL, the Greed is Good league, has done nothing other than make the age-old tribal battle between the Old Firm, even more tribal; and this isn't healthy for the game, or the two clubs. If I have a wish for 2012, it is that decency and common sense will prevail and we will return to the days of honest rivalry, friendly banter and good competition - what we are seeing today, particularly on the internet, just aint healthy.

THE MORE I see of Craig Whyte's reign at Ibrox - the more I worry. Let's be honest here, Sir David Murray doesn't have a good record in sports management. He nearly ruined Scottish basketball through his stewardship of MIM then Livingston Bulls - where his model was unsustainable. He brought the same management model to Rangers - where it was equally unsustainable, and in both cases, he walked away, having spent a fortune for little return. He never attained the true European respect for MIM which he desired and 2008 not withstanding, his European record with Rangers was disgraceful.

Murray was an entrepreneur - he craved success, adulation and a high public profile. In the end he was forced to sell for £1, a club whose single shares at one time commanded a price tag of upwards of £10 PER SHARE. If that is not failure and mis-management, what is?

Murray has now sold the club to Craig Whyte - a Venture Capitalist. As I have explained before, VCs are the diametric opposite of entrepreneurs, they operate in the shadows, despise publicity and are in it for the money they can make, rather than public acclaim.

For these reasons, Whyte's purchase of Rangers doesn't make sense. If we take him at his word and he was a Rangers' fan in his younger, poorer days - although one mutual friend assures me he (Whyte) only ever claimed allegiance to Motherwell - then, perhaps he does have a dream of taking the club forward. If he's only in it for the money - I don't see where it will come from, since nobody with any sense would try to make a pile out of the game up here.

Classic VC behaviour would have been to have sold-on the club's few saleable playing assets: McGregor, Jelavic, Naismith, Davis - and go with the young boys. But that modus would demand an experienced manager, with a track record in developing and enjoying success with young players. Walter Smith never fitted that bill, Ally McCoist doesn't. Indeed, perhaps only Sir Alex Ferguson does, and there is no way he will ever manage Rangers.

The club's current travails - inconsistency, turgid football, comes as no surprise. If he really wants long-term success, he (Whyte) would perhaps be as well telling McCoist: "We sell our big earners, we get rid of the dead wood and we go with the kids". After half a season in the SPL, they will either be ready for next season, or can be jettisoned and replaced for next season.

McCoist's early days as a manager have not been exactly stimulating for the fans - perhaps in more-sensible time, he would have been able to rebuild for the long term, the fans might have accepted a few seasons in Celtic's shadow, with the promise of better days to come. In today's over-heated atmosphere, where Rangers HAVE to beat Celtic (and vice versa) with no other challengers on the horizon, that isn't going to happen.

These are difficult times for Rangers, for Celtic and for Scottish football.

How are times hard for us? I can hear the Celtic fans asking.

Simple - Rangers, without being in any way as good as Rangers teams of yore, have won the last three SPL titles. If, in their current state of disarray, they make it four-in-a-row, what does that say about Celtic? If they don't, and Celtic win the SPL - the feat in no way, given the paucity of opposition, makes them anything like worthy successors to the Lisbon Lions. Aye, we live in hard and difficult times.