I WONDER when the rest of Scottish football will wake up to the reality of their current situation. The long, slow, tragic death of Rangers goes on - the club has been on life-support for 24 weeks now, since it was placed in administration. Rangers are like some rich old uncle, on his deathbed, with all the members of his extended family anxiously awaiting his ultimate demise, so they can get their hands on the family silver.
But, stubbornly, he refuses to die; there are periodic signs of a recovery, then a relapse - and still, with time marching on and the clock still ticking, they await the final act. As I have been saying on here for months, this show has a long time still to run and when it does end, the aftermath will be messy, very messy, with nothing assured but some nice little earners for m'learned friends, who will set-out to sort-out the mess.
However, life goes on and the real start to the new 2012-13 season is but 48 or so hours away as I write. I know, if you're a fan of one of our big SPL clubs, the outcome of the Ramsden's Cup ties will barely register in a normal season. But, this is no normal season and, even if only as an antidote to wall-to-wall Olympics - even Beach Volleyball pales after a while, honestly - the Ramsden's will do nicely.
Of course, with Rangers out of the equation, what happens in the SPL this season will be very interesting. Being somewhat keen on statistics, I have been trying to work out what might happen. For instance, the average gap between whichever of the Old Firm finished second and the best of the Rest, in third place, since the SPL went to the 38-game, top-six/bottom-six split in 2000 has been 23 points.
Leaving aside season 2005-06, when Hearts actually finished second, above Rangers, the closest any of the other sides has come to whichever Old Firm team finished second that season was in 2006-07, when third-placed Aberdeen came in a mere seven points behind second-placed Rangers, with Champions Celtic 12 points clear at the top. The biggest gap between the Old Firm and the Rest was in season 2004-05, when Rangers took the title by a single point from Celtic, with Hibs, 31 points adrift, in third place.
The best points tally achieved by any of the Rest (forgetting that Hearts second place) was the 68 points which Hearts accrued in finishing third in 2003-04, while the lowest third-placed points tally over the same period was the 58 points which Livingston accumulated in finishing third in 2002. Over the 12 seasons of 38-games, the average third-placed points tally is 62 points.
Therefore, with Rangers out of the equation, we can speculate that 62 points or thereabouts will be sufficient to set-up perhaps Champions League qualification round participation in 2013-14, if not, certainly Europe League status.
Over the past five seasons the average third-placed finish tally has been 63 points, so that ought to be enough. 62 or 63 points from the 114 available over the entire season surely isn't that big an ask. Matches against Celtic account for a mere 12 of that total, so, surely the game plan for the season for any of the truly ambitious "Rest" ought to be - to forget all about Celtic and concentrate on beating the other ten clubs.
Anything they get against Celtic is a bonus - but, the real effort in this season has to come against the other ten clubs. For far-too-long the measure of the other clubs has been how they got on against the Old Firm. the Old Firm is (albeit perhaps temporarily) no more.
There has long been a belief in Scottish football that some players among the Rest only really burst a gut against the Old Firm. They might well be fans of their club on the park, who genuinely despise the two big beasts; they might be the fan of the other half of the Old Firm, determined to do their best to hammer the enemy; they might be fans of the half of the Old Firm they are facing on the given day - determined to prove they are good enough to wear the jersey and certainly better than those currently doing so. So, they try harder.
The trick might be for a manager or managers to persuade their players, the Celtic games don't matter in the grand scheme of things - far better to make sure they win the rest, and merely look to pick up bonus points against the Hoops.
Who knows, if some gaffer can successfully sell this ploy to his men - we could see a genuine challenge to Celtic coming from his club and the SPL campaign being far more competitive and nothing like the Celtic cake-walk we are all anticipating.
And that's without going into the belief, which I have seen put forward by some fans of other clubs that, against sides they view as "beneath them", some Celtic players play with a little less conviction and belief.
Scottish football, at its top flight, was never more-competitive than in the two decades following the end of World War II up to Jock Stein's return to Celtic Park as manager in 1965.
During that period, with only Rangers being consistently good and winning regularly, we saw Hibernian, Heart of Midlothian, Dundee and Kilmarnock winning league championships and Aberdeen, Motherwell, Clyde, Heart of Midlothian, Falkirk, St Mirren and Dunfermline Athletic winning the Scottish Cup. The League Cup was, during this period, won by East Fife, Motherwell, Dundee, Heart of Midlothian and Aberdeen, with some of these clubs named as winners of a domestic title, winning more than one.
That was far-healthier than the Old Firm near-monopoly of recent years and it is to be hoped that a handful of SPL clubs will rise to the challenge and have a real go at Celtic.
Sadly, the omens are not good, with the Chairmen, those fine, upstanding men who were prepared to duck, dive and fudge to keep Rangers alive, until faced by the reality of outright fans fury, finally found their backbones and punished the Ibrox club for their proven wrong-doing - the as yet unproved allegations have still to be substantiated.
If these callow men can somehow find the positivity to allow their managers and players to shoot for the moon - we could have a really good season ahead of us.
There has been enough doom and gloom - let's accentuate the positive and go for glory in the new season.
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