A Guid New Year Tae Ane an Awe

A Guid New Year to all readers of this blog and apologies for the recent silence; take a hard to beat virus, add the holiday season, sprinkle on a dash of melancholy and, it suddenly becomes hard to find things in Scottish football worth philosophising about.

 

However, new year, new energy, so, here we are again.  There is no disputing, 2012 was a terrible year for the beautiful game in Scotland. Almost every one of the 52 weeks was dominaterd by a single story - the Rangers melt-down and re-birth. Some fans of other clubs, in particular the members of "the Celtic Family" have spent most of the past year screaming from the rooftops that Rangers are dead, they are no more: for their own peace of mind, I wish they would shut-up and forget it. The management may be new, the controlling company ditto, but, Rangers are still very much alive and kicking. There is a clear and continuing timeline between the Gallant Pioneers and the current management; there is still a team, wearing blue shirts, white shorts and red socks playing at Ibrox - get used to it.

 

That said, the hoped-for humility which followed the Murray/Whyte mis-management, the to use HRH the Princess Royal's great phrase - "the Horlicks" which was the Duff and Duffer administration process and the uncertainties of Sevco's take-over, has as yet to emerge from Ra Peepul.

 

Leave: "We'll be back" threats to Arnie and the T101 cyborgs boys; better to say nothing, but to use the years of exile in the SFL to develop a well-oiled machine capable of returning to the top flight in Scotland and storming through that division.

 

I have a feeling that, by the time Rangers get back to the top division, the young players such as Ross Perry, Darren Cole, Chris Hegarty, Barrie McKay, Kyle Hutton and Co, currently enjoying first team exposure denied all but the best of their youthful predecessors, will have become valuable players in a more-Scottish Rangers squad than has been the case since the arrival of Graeme Souness those 27 years ago - and Rangers will be all the better for it.

 

You will note I have not used the letters S or P or L in my description of the top flight into which Rangers will be promoted, perhaps as early as August 2015, because I do not believe the "Greed is Good" league will last that long. Indeed, unless there is a wide-spread outbreak of fiscal good sense in Scottish football between now and 2015, we may well see a return to the old days of full-time squads at Celtic Park and Ibrox and mainly part-time ones elsewhere, whilst there is a real danger that Scottish football will have sunk to the level of the Welsh, Irish or League of Ireland leagues.

 

For too-long we Scots have had an unrealistic, over-inflated sense of our prowess at football and I can see little or no evidence of this changing soon. We may not all be doomed, but it seems like we are to me.

 

Scottish football isn't working, it hasn't been working for years and the biggest shame about all this is, regardless of the self-inflicted disaster which befell Rangers and the warning that ought to have been to the smaller clubs, there seems little desire within Hampden's corridors of power to put things right.

 

My biggest wish for 2013 is a wide-spread outbreak of realism striking Scottish football, coupled with a genuine desire to sort out the mess. If we got that, I'd be a happy old grump.

 

We all know what the Scots do best is fight with the English; and if they haven't got the English to fight - they fight amongst themselves. Today, there is too-much in-fighting, while the big money of Sky and the rest pushes English football at us.

 

Let's turn the tide, starting this year.