From Rejection to Redemption at Rangers

Somehow I don't think we'll be hearing too much more from the retrospectively miffed misfits who let Rangers down by not winning promotion last season.

If Saturday's six goal mauling of Hibs in the Petrofac Training Cup proved anything it was that every negative word Ibrox chairman Dave King had to say about the players employed by the club last season was deadly accurate.

And King might not, with the benefit of hindsight, have gone far enough to denounce the disreputable efforts of so many of those who are now plying their trade elsewhere or are still looking for a new place of work where they'll get nothing like the exorbitant wages they were on while Rangers were negotiating a journey without a sat nav that took them into a Championship cul de sac last May.

Easter Road, where Rangers had come to ignominious grief following a four-nil battering from Hibs in the league that came after Ally McCoist had gone and Kenny McDowall had replaced him as interim manager at the tail end of last season, was a source of revelation at the weekend.

It proved to me, at any rate, that Mark Warburton's radically revamped side will win their league title by a considerable distance this season, probably by ten to fifteen points.

It also demonstrated where a keen eye for a player, and a firm sense of organisation once a team has been assembled, can get you in the short term as opposed to the long run.

And it underlined the extent to which King was correct when he said last season's attempt at winning promotion to the top flight was an unsatisfactory, unacceptable affront to the people who employed, and supported, the prima donnas who took exception to having their deficiencies presented for public disapproval.

A year from now Rangers will be back to being Celtic's number one challenger for the top prize and serious money has yet to be spent on the Ibrox squad in the interim.

Guessing what will happen before a competitive ball is kicked is a daft game that pundits given to illogical behaviour are obliged to play at this time of year, but only those unable, or unwilling, to see the evidence of their own eyes could dispute that Rangers looked formidable in the extreme at the weekend.

Rejection to redemption is the recurring theme where Warburton's side is concerned.

Players who have bounced from one loan deal to another and been of no fixed abode for long enough to have Social Services alerted have now found what looks like a welcoming home at Ibrox.

James Tavernier, for example, has had seven loan deals in the last five years and yet looked an accomplished performer when Warburton's hand of friendship was placed around his shoulder. Likewise Andy Halliday and the others from that carefully cultivated unit who dismantled Hibs' confidence for the remainder of the season.

There are always caveats in any confidently constructed case.

The goalkeeper, Wes Foderingham, looks like a bomb scare to me, but that'll be of scant consolation to Hibs.

How do the side allegedly seen as Rangers' main challengers for the title recover from losing six goals at home to them ?

It is the psychological equivalent of being torn limb from limb and there is no known cure for that.

And how can Alan Stubbs maintain his stance that Scott Allan will remain at Easter Road for the last year of his contract ?

Rangers cynically undermined Allan's worth to Hibs when they submitted derisory offers for his transfer to Ibrox and forced Stubbs to start Saturday's game without the division's reigning Player of the Year. And cynicism rules Scottish football when malice isn't in the driving seat.

Did Rangers do anything wrong ? Not at all.

Has something extraordinary happened at Ibrox ? Absolutely.

After three years of being used as a doormat by those who made fortunes out of a club who couldn't afford to lose the money, Rangers have returned to playing hardball.

Now set your watch for the return of old fashioned hostilities between Glasgow's finest. It's all coming to a couple of grounds near you in the not so distant future.

And enthusiasm for the return of the competitive season at Premiership level on Saturday should now be boundless after that World Cup draw which put Scotland and England in the same qualifying group F.

The fans have been enthused on a countrywide basis and if Celtic could make it to the group stages of the Champions League while Aberdeen do the same in the Europa league it would be jamboree time.

If you're not looking forward to the immediate days ahead, starting at Celtic Park on Wednesday with the visit of Qarabag, then you're one of two things.

Either you have no interest in football, in which case you'll have nobody to talk to for the next two years, or else you're a Hibs fan.

They saw a ghost on Saturday and it was the spectre of losing their best player to Rangers, sooner rather than later, while knowing that their team is then destined to fight it out to see if they are good enough to make it to the play-offs.

Like the multi-millionaire Frenchman says in the telly advert, do I need to tell you this is the best thing in the world ?