ANOTHER of my generation of football writers, now semi-retired, hosts a blog which, naturally reflecting its author, is very much skewed towards the view from about half-way up the Copland Road Stand at Ibrox. In my old mate's eyes, Rangers' current travails are all the fault of - to some degree David Murray's failure to reign-in Dick Advocaat, but mostly to anti-Rangers bias by certain well-placed Celtic supporters.
There may well be a grain of truth in this, but, ranting and raving about the failings of the former owner and biased decisions taken by bankers will not halt FC Rangers' full steam ahead cruise towards that bloody great iceberg now standing ahead of it.
It is common knowledge that there is never a single reason for a fatal car crash, rather a lot of seemingly unrelated wee incidents come together in one big bang, which provides business for the undertaker. I presume, even as I type this, the corporate minds at KPMG and the other firms which have done well out of company failures in recent years are licking their lips at the money to be made out of the failure of Rangers.
One can only hope that, just as there was a wee, seemingly insignificant almost nerdy accountant from Croy, sitting in his office in Canada watching the old Celtic of the families lurch towards Carey Street and making ready to mount his charger and ride to the last-minute rescue - somewhere other than Scotland, a wee nerdy Larkhall boy is getting ready to do likewise for Rangers.
For right now, as things stand and as, daily, fresh revelations of the past business practices of Craig Whyte and concerns about what, if anything he can do to alter the club's course arise, I cannot help but feel - were John Laurie's Private Fraser to be a regular in certain "Rangers houses" around the club's supporters' heartlands in Scotland, his regular declarations of: "We're awe doomed, doomed ah tell ye", would be greeted as extreme optimism.
Ally McCoist's alleged demands for more money, to buy new players, are akin to the aristocrat, emerging from his bank, having been told - the money was all gone, the bailiffs would be round in the morning and he would then be out on the street, lighting-up a cigar with his last tenner.
I don't know if Coisty will ever be seen as a Struth, Symon, Wallace or Smith - but, he hasn't made the best start. Coisty can only piss with what he's been given, but, if he gets rid of the flab, puts in the hard hours on the training field and gets as fit as he can be - he can still probably piss higher than the next man.
Rangers is supposed to be the ultra-Presbyterian team. Well, perhaps a big bit of that extreme Presbyterian work ethic will get them past Celtic and on to four in a row. I doubt it, but, Coisty isn't going to get any more new players this season; his team is mis-firing badly, he has to get himself and his team of mechanics - Messrs McDowall, Durrant and Stewart on the job and working to put things right - he cannot buy his way out of this one.
As for the players, maybe, as with the old joke about the galley slaves being unchained, fed and allowed up on deck to sun-bathe, they should be told: "Enjoy the day lads - tomorrow the captain wants to go water-skiing".
I don't see Coisty water-skiing to the title, but, with the first signs of over-confidence emerging from the Lennoxtown dressing rooms, he should be ready to try.
BY the way, all this focus on Rangers' problems has tended to deflect from one obvious fact - how well Dundee United played on Sunday. Similarly, in the other games this season in which an admittedly poor Rangers team have shed points, winning sides such as Killie and St Mirren have been almost damned with faint praise.
Sure, they did beat poor Rangers teams, but they still beat them. Perhaps my Old Firm-osessed colleagues in the mainstream media in Scotland should be talking up the other SPL teams - the gap between the Big Two and the other ten isn't as broad as it once was - and that's fact.
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