IT IS SAID: “Madness is doing the same thing over and over again, in the hope of a different outcome;” or something like that. Whatever, last week's news of a £20million-plus loss for Rangers – well, was anyone surprised?
OK, the effects of the Covid pandemic is a big factor in that loss, but, Rangers have been wedded to Viv Nicholson economics since 1986 – if not before. The Lawrence Family, who had effectively ran the club for two decades, they bailed-out because they could no longer afford to run the club. Sir David Murray came and went, spending other people's millions along the way, then it all went tits-up – and there's a great book to be written by the independent-minded investigative journalist who can plough through all the myths, lies, disinformation and rumour of the past decade or so and discover the truth. Good luck to him or her.
Since Murray accepted Craig Whyte's £1 coin, a procession of hooks, crooks and comic singers have come and gone from the hallowed marble halls of Ibrox, notably perhaps Dave King, the man who took spending OPM (that's Other People's Money) to a whole new level. The old club was liquidated, only to be replaced by a new entity, with the same DNA and modus operandi.
And what have we learned from the whole debacle? I would suggest, that The Murphyia are better at running a football club than The Scotia Nostra.
Back in the 1960s, while Willie Waddell, having left Kilmarnock for the then near-omnipotent Scottish Daily Express was running his character assassination campaign on The Boy David, as he insisted on calling then Rangers manager David White, I was told by an Ibrox insider that Waddell would soon be installed as boss.
A friend's father, a local bank manager and Kilmarnock season ticket holder poo-pooed the suggestion, then had a think. He said: Mr Waddell told me personally, when he left our club, his next job would be outside football management. Mind you Rangers has very-little to do with football.”
Plus ca change, etc.
STILL ON Rangers, the best fiction writers in Scotland – the Chief football Writers of our 'Red Tops,' have been positively wetting themselves both before and after Steven Gerrard got the Aston Villa gig. I suppose, being an England legend, who has actually won something – albeit a “Diddy League” like the SPL Gerrard was on Villa's radar. He has now gone to Birmingham, good luck to him. But, Villa, I'm not so sure.
OK, the job will be well-paid; he knows the league, he knows Villa's Chief Executive from their time together at Liverpool. But, does Villa have the budget to compete at the top end of the over-heated EPL? I think not. Also, given the way things seem to operate down there, lose three games and you're out, Gerrard might in time have cause to reflect on the more-peaceful life, even allowing for the pressure to win, he enjoyed at Ibrox.
You never know in football, however. He has taken the job, he will give it a go, and if he turns Villa into contenders for the English title, he will be well-placed to succeed Jurgen Klopp in the job SG really wants – fail, and he gets a nice big pay-off towards financial security. Deciding to leave Glasgow was probably a no-brainer.
The big plus for the “red top rotweillers” is, they can now speculate to their heart's desire as to who gets the Ibrox gig. Be prepared for some of the usual extreme left-field nonsense.
BACK IN the black and white days of long-sleeved, buttoned shirts, knee-length shorts, ankle-high brown leather Manfield Hotspur boots and light tan, Tomlinson T lether balls, thanks to judicious decisions to largely ignore Johnny Foreigner in favour of the Home Internationals – barring the end-of-season continental tour, which was more a jolly for the blazers than serious football – the SFA could convince Terracing Tam and Standite Stuart that Scottish fitba mattered.
Then they decided to rejoin FIFA and immediately fell flat on their faces, by refusing a wild card entry to the 1950 World Cup, before making an absolute dog's breakfast of the 1954 finals and being slaughtered 7-0 by Uruguay.
Hibs won back a wee bit of prestige by reaching the semi-finals of the first European Cup, but, since then, Lisbon Lions, Barcelona Bears and Gothenburg Giants apart, it's been a long, slow descent to the depths.
Scottish football hasn't worked for years. Internationally, in the 20th century, we reached 69% of the World Cup finals for which we tried to qualify; we reached 25% of the European Championship finals for which we attempted to qualify – giving us an overall qualification record of 52% - 11 finals appearances from 21 campaigns.
In the 21st century, we have tried and failed to qualify for four World Cups and qualified once from six attempts at the European Championships – giving us an overall 9% qualification success rate from 11 tournaments entered.
That's just to QUALIFY. Once we get there and the real games begin, we fall away badly. We have played in 11 finals tournaments, playing in all 32 games, of which we have won precisely six, that's 18.75% over 67 years. Yet, over all these years of not winning, the SFA has somehow managed to keep the Tartan Army on-board and believing that better days are just around the corner.
Mind you, our international record is stellar when compared to that of our clubs in the various European club competitions – just three trophy wins from over 200 different campaigns. Yes, 21st century European football competition is loaded in favour of the big clubs from the big leagues, but, if we are as good as football as we like to think we are, we should be doing better than we currently are. But, the fact is, Scottish clubs are decidedly League One, far less Championship class in Europe.
The game's high heid yins up here may occasionally shuffle the deckchairs, but, otherwise, the Sinking Ship Scotland just sails on,bouncing off icebergs left, right and centre. And, until we really grasp the nettle and make the needed changes, we will continue to be also-rans in the race for football success.
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