Bottomed Out And No Way Up

Hands up who thinks Lewis MacLeod still being at Rangers would have made a blind bit of difference to the outcome of Sunday's Old Firm game?

I'm waiting.

The fact that MacLeod was sold to Brentford a few weeks ago to help prevent the Ibrox club from going out of business somehow provoked all sorts of anger, but the truth of the matter is Rangers have bottomed out as a football club and as a football team.

Never in the field of human resources have so many written and said so much about so little at the National Stadium on Sunday afternoon, and I include myself among those wasting their breath.

Decades of experience have shown me that ninety-five per cent of what is said, or written, in advance of an Old Firm game turns out to be, with the benefit of hindsight, absolute rubbish.

I believed that the first Glasgow derby for the best part of three years would saddle the community at large with the most toxic form of hostility witnessed in the history of the fixture. I was wrong.

Hampden was a parody of an Old Firm game, a pale imitation of what some people actually believe to be the greatest derby in the world.

The fifty-four countries out-with Scotland who took live television coverage of the League Cup semi-final have a case for alleging a breach of the Trades Description Act.

It was a sterile, one-sided non-contest of a match with both sets of supporters going through their ritual forms of abuse towards each other out of a sense of obligation and not because they'd been stirred by anything they were watching on the park.

There now exists an element of the Celtic support who have agreed not to allow themselves any critical faculties. When I said on Superscoreboard that Ronny Deila's side had passed up on the opportunity to beat Rangers by an exotic margin I was told in reply by one caller that this was "What I expected you to say."

He said I was the audio version of an internet troll.

If I knew what that meant I might be offended.

The truth of the matter is a decent, but fairly ordinary, Celtic side were miles in front of Rangers and could, probably should, have scored six goals without reply. If you don't accept that then you're kidding yourself on.

This was a Rangers team without a redeeming feature, and MacLeod still being at Ibrox would have made no difference to anything. The worry is how long it will take the club to be in a position where they are something other than a punch bag for Celtic in future Old Firm games, assuming Rangers manage to win promotion to the Premier League next season.

Those who would seek to unseat the existing board of directors at Ibrox at an Extraordinary General Meeting on a date still to be decided form the first part of the next chapter in the club's history.

Who runs the place and how they sort out their debts and other financial issues attached to the club is the first priority. When all of that is done, and it looks as if it will take a considerable period of time, the next thing to be done is address the impoverished state of the first team squad.

Prior to Sunday's game against Celtic you could have argued that Lee Wallace was the only Rangers player who'd get into a green and white jersey. I'm not so sure the full back would still manage that cross over.

The years away from the top flight have dulled his attacking instincts and diminished the price Rangers could ask for him if anybody was to inquire about Wallace.

The other high profile names in the squad, like Lee McCulloch, Kenny Miller and Jon Daly, are now past their best and unable to carry the club forward.

Kris Boyd, the SPL's all-time top goalscorer, couldn't even be trusted to come off the subs bench at Hampden even though Rangers were bereft of a goalscoring threat.

They are threadbare and wouldn't be top six in the event of winning access to the top flight.

Who is to blame for this state of affairs over the last three, wasted years is for the Rangers fans to argue over. That's a history lesson. How the club addresses the immediate to long term future is the most pertinent topic for discussion.

Celtic left a two million pound striker, Stefan Scepovic, as an un-used sub and nobody even mentioned it because those who were on the park were toying with Rangers and going through the motions of illustrating a gulf in capabilities.

Dundee will give Deila's team a much harder match at Dens Park on Saturday when the clubs meet in the Scottish Cup. Rangers' battered reputation will, meanwhile, be up for inspection against Raith Rovers in the same competition.

It would be better if Kenny McDowall's side went out to the Fifers, or somebody else further down the road, rather than face another Hampden meeting with Celtic.

For the first time in Old Firm history one half of the double act has a team who can't possibly win against the other lot.

That's bad for all of us, regardless of what some Celtic supporters think. Neil Lennon said last week that Rangers' drop into the lower divisions had been bad for Scottish football.

Is the Celtic fans' iconic figure to be branded a liar by the very people who adored him?

Sunday's slow burn demolition of Rangers proved it'll be a long time before they will trouble Celtic again, but what impact will that have on the public's interest in the game?

It's right to draw attention to the lowly number of arrests made in Glasgow on Sunday, even if it still jars to compliment people for acting like normal human beings, but the crime stats highlight something else.

The rivalry between Celtic and Rangers has reached the stage where it's not even worth fighting about.