Gas at a peep Sunday
Gas at a peep Sunday might not have the same pithy ring to it as the one about a helicopter and an altered flight path from a season gone by.
But it does have the ring of authenticity where yesterday’s Betfred Cup semi finals at Murrayfield and Hampden are concerned.
Hearts, the Premiership league leaders, and a resurgent Rangers were abruptly halted in their tracks and given a stark reminder of the game’s capacity to mangle logic and reason. Now they have to deal with the fall-out.
Certain expressions can, in that regard, inspire an extreme form of reaction.
For example, when I said that, for as long as Brendan Rodgers is Celtic’s manager, Rangers will live in Celtic’s shadow it would have been naïve not to expect a hostile reception to the idea from those who did not share the sentiment.
To be fair, it was a relatively easy stance to take while Mark Warburton, Padro Caixhina and Graeme Murty were not so much steering the ship at Ibrox as running the club aground.
But the tumult following the arrival of Steven Gerrard as manager at Ibrox prompted the question of whether I would be standing by that comment.
The answer then, as now, is that only the winning of a major trophy can render the statement redundant. And that is why Sunday’s result and performance has been a source of deep seated frustration for the Rangers fans and their manager.
All credit to Derek McInnes for overcoming a mediocre start to the league season at Pittodrie and maintaining a sequence of cup appearances which have seen Aberdeen outplayed by Hibs and Rangers in successive rounds while still defiantly remaining in the competition.
But Aberdeen were largely poor and anonymous at Hampden before they mugged Rangers for a second time this season.
Which makes things even worse for Gerrard.
He has been brought to Ibrox for one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is to switch the balance of power from the East end of Glasgow to the South side. A not inconsiderable amount of money has been paid to obtain his services and those of several players on contracts that are lavish in nature for a club not renowned for making much money in recent years.
In return for their money, the club expects a tangible sign of progress having been made and demands to see a symbolic corner having been turned. This can only come with the winning of a major trophy for the first time since 2011.
Gerrard must have assurances that money will be no object in the pursuit of that ambition since he is now on record as saying he will buy more players in the next transfer window if the current crop fail him again.
There must be a money tree somewhere he can shake that has not been visible to all before this time.
Rangers’ quality has been called into question by the manager, and the players he has questioned now need to address the eight point gap which exists between them and Hearts in the league table..
That particular job could be assisted by the now visibly suspect nature of the Tynecastle side virtually torn apart by Celtic in a second half at Murrayfiled which contradicted the mundane nature of the forty-five minutes that had gone before.
Their self-esteem, like that of Rangers, was dented by self-inflicted mistakes and it was Hearts’ good fortune that Celtic did not run up what would have been a record score in matches between the clubs.
The effect their collapse now has on Hearts’ league form will be quickly put up for examination.
Their next three matches have them up against Hibs, Celtic and Kilmarnock. If the loss of Steven Naismith for those games has the same debilitating effect it had on them yesterday then Hearts credentials as genuine league title contenders will be called seriously into question.
I was foolish enough to think Craig Levein’s side had a chance of beating Celtic at the weekend. That was before he sent his team out with a plan to contain the opposition rather than contest the outcome.
It was a flawed strategy from the moment Celtic scored and Hearts imploded.
There is a school of thought that Celtic have now acknowledged Europe at the highest level is beyond them and have opted to concentrate on taking domestic domination to a new level.
This has been seen as a reduction of ambition but it didn’t seem to bother the tens of thousands of supporters at Murrayfield who revelled in the dismantling of Hearts.
Our football community is a parochial lot.
Tribalism rules and being dominant over your historic rivals still counts for an awful lot. This will be exemplified if Rodgers wins his seventh successive trophy as Celtic manager when they face Aberdeen at Hampden in the Betfred Cup final on December 2.
But if the weekend proved anything it is that unpredictability is alive and well and living in Scotland.
The games at Hampden and Murrayfield were not the epic encounters that had been anticipated but they were replete with the necessary level of surprise, unsung heroes and controversy to satisfy domestic tastes.
And they did attract close to 110,000 spectators to vouch for the viability of the product.
Now for the storm over the ticket allocation for the cup final. I shall offer the personal opinion that the names and addresses of every Aberdeen fan at Hampden on Sunday should be taken in order to offer them briefs for the game. They deserve that much for loyalty.
But Aberdeen have surely forfeited the automatic right to a fifty-fifty split of tickets after sending back thousands of tickets for the penultimate stage.
I can’t hear you. There are too many people shouting and bawling.