What goes around doesn't necessarily come around
By Hugh Keevins
Think about it this way.
The last time Celtic enjoyed complete and utter domination of the domestic game here, breaking new ground by becoming the first Scottish club ever to win nine league titles in a row, Rangers won a European trophy in the middle of that run.
Younger readers can look it up if they didn't already know, or don't choose to believe me.
While Jock Stein had established a stranglehold over the rest on Celtic's behalf Rangers went to the Nou Camp Stadium in Barcelona and beat Moscow Dynamo 3 - 2 to win what was then known as the European Cup Winners Cup.
It would take a pretty vivid imagination to come up with a repeat of that scenario today.
Come to think of it, it would take the use of legally prescribed hallucogenics to come up with a repeat of that scenario today.
Celtic are, under Brendan Rodgers, sweeping all before them in the midst of a season in which they have won their sixth championship in succession without losing a game and lifted the League Cup without so much as conceding a single goal at any stage in the competition.
But it getting to the stage where the English language is looking inadequate when it comes to the job of trying to define the depths of the misery which engulfs Rangers.
Humiliated on the park by Celtic at Ibrox on Saturday, embarassed by the medieval misconduct of the supporters who would drage the club's name through the gutter.
As if life wasn't hard enough at the moment without allegations of racism, hooliganism and assorted forms of anti-social behaviour.
But the recidivists will, unfortunately, always be with us. There is nowhere to go with them.
It is the question of where Rangers go from here that is important for the club and the rest of the game at large.
Celtic actually did the hard of understanding a favour in that respect at the weekend.
They drew a diagram which exposed in dramatic and graphic fashion the paucity of a squad of players are too intimidated by Celtic ever to give them a game, far less challenge Rodgers' side for any prizes.
That group of players must therefore be dismantled and replaced by others who are not paralysed by fear at the thought of what Celtic might do to them.
It is quite straightforward, money, and only money, will alter the bleak landscape which currently surrounds Ibrox.
And if the current board members and their associates can't generate sufficient funds to carry out that process of change then the club will need to look for new ownership.
Or else.
Celtic's business model is long established and successful. Funds are readily available for an exceptional manager who has assembled an exceptional side and is intent on them making their mark in Europe.
It would appear that domestic domination is now a given for Celtic and Rodgers want to strengthen his team for Champions League purposes.
In the meantime, Rangers have, temporarily or otherwise, ceased to be seen as Celtic's main rivals.
Aberdeen will finish second in the league table. Aberdeen faced Celtic in the League Cup final. Aberdeen will confront Celtic in the Scottish Cup final at the end of the month. Do you get the picture?
We live in unprecedented times. Both Celtic and Rangers have won Nine in a Row, but during neither era of sustained supremacy was the gap in class between the clubs as great as it is now.
This is not good for business.
It is a source of unconfined joy for the Celtic supporters because business is non of their business, unless it's the business of winding up the rival fan base for whom they have no sympathy whatsoever.
The treble could yet be won by their club. The fiftieth anniversary of the European Cup final win over Inter Milan in Lisbon has yet to be celebrated. They're even bringing Henrik Larsson and Lubo Moravcik back to Celtic Park for a charity match at the end of the month as if to remind the Rangers supporters of the last time things wee as bad as this for them.
You could stiffen a Celtic supporters' tax code and repossess his, or her, home and you couldn't take the smile off his, or her, face at the moment.
Meanwhile, the Rangers supporters, bereft after the weekend, have been transported back to 1994.
That was when they were ringing up successive league titles and watching celtic slip closer to the precipice.
Enter the man with plan.
Fergus McCann pledged five years of work towards the job of restoring Celtic and you know how that turned out without me having to remind you.
Rangers must now convince their fans there is any kind of coherent plan in place to address their glaringly obvious shortcomings.
If there isn't they need to find a sugar daddy in a hurry before things get any worse.
Pedro Caixinha also has to prove his sceptics wrong at the same time. The manager cut an un-convincing figure by the end of Saturday's rout at Ibrox and the jury room is filling up before the Portuguese has even had ten games in charge of Rangers.
There is a saying in football that what goes around comes around, but sometimes the machinery which performs the rotation process needs to be overhauled at some expense.
Otherwise it stalls.