Slings and Arrows

A bloke from Eyemouth, Gary Anderson, is world champion after beating Phil 'The Power' Taylor at the darts extravaganza in London on Sunday night.

Earlier in the day Aberdeen went clear of Celtic at the top of the Premiership table.

Now I happen to find darts repetitive and boring, but that's not the point. What is relevant is that Anderson's achievement in taking the world title for the first time ultimately proved that records are there to be broken, seemingly impenetrable forces do one day crumble and jumping to conclusions is a dangerous form of exercise to take.

That's where Derek McInnes has cracked it at Pittodrie.

Football, in spite of all its machinations off the park where some of our troubled clubs have been concerned in recent years, remains a simple game.

If you defend well enough to go seven league matches in a row without conceding a goal or dropping a point then the chances are you're going to be successful.

And if you happen to name the same team, week in, week out, while accumulating those impressive statistics then so much the better.

Sound coaching is about repetition as much as anything else. Consistency of selection on match days is a major help towards winning trophies.

McInnes has proved that to be the case, and so has the wonderful Alex Neil at Hamilton Accies. No-one could argue if they momentarily stopped the season now to give Alex a special merit award for the job he's done while taking the red and white hoops to a league place adjacent to the green and white variety from the East end of Glasgow.

Derek, meanwhile, will get the Manager of the Year award if he becomes the man to break a thirty year old duopoly within Scottish football.

Rangers have taken seventeen titles and Celtic have acquired thirteen since a club from outside Glasgow last won the flagship competition. No other country in Europe has had to endure such a prolonged stranglehold on their domestic game, but a combination of arrogance, complacency and mis-management has put the Old Firm in a position where they could be about to feel the way Phil The Power felt when he left Alexandra Palace on Sunday.

The Rangers side I watched struggle to beat Dumbarton at Ibrox on Saturday wouldn't win a play-off for promotion with Hibs because they're not good enough, and that has nothing to do with the financial chaos which has engulfed the club for the last three years.

Players have come in on good money who wouldn't have got near a Rangers jersey in times gone by. And a first team budget far in excess of what anyone else in the Championship can spend has offered no guarantee of anything where getting out of the division's concerned.

When Kenny McDowall said in his press conference after the game that he had told his players, "That'll do for me" he was playing a media game.

You say one thing for public consumption while privately holding the opposite view.

A coach of Kenny's standing and experience can't possibly have found the stuttering display against a part-time team to be to his satisfaction.

Rangers' first priority is to sort out who is to finance the club's operating budget from now until the end of the season. The next job is to determine whether former director Dave King and the consortium led by millionaire Douglas Park will join forces and depose the directors who currently run the show at Ibrox.

It might sound exotic and seductive when an American financier, Robert Sarver, lets it be known he'd be willing to pump £18m into Rangers in return for a controlling stake in the club, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the owner of the Pheonix Suns basketball team to announce his intention to team up with Dougie and Dave and form a trio for change.

Multi millionaire entrepreneurs from the USA tend to go for a one man band rather than join combos.

But if an old cynic should be proved wrong it would do Celtic well to sit up straight and pay attention.

Any financial resurgence at Ibrox would have to be viewed seriously by Rangers' historic rivals.

Celtic going off to Gran Canaria to play a tournament there this weekend rather than undertaking their scheduled league match at home vouches for an ongoing need to make extra money wherever possible.

The kind of money that compensates for failure to make the Champions League group stages, even after being given a second go at qualification courtesy of UEFA.

The kind of money needed to address the fact that league attendances at Celtic Park have dropped significantly. Those who no longer go to games have failed to buy into the Ronny Deila experiment. Those who stay faithful, and regularly call Superscoreboard, absolutely refuse to accept the evidence of what is in front of their own eyes.

Aberdeen might be a model of consistency, but it's still impossible to second guess what Deila is going to do next.

Those who are complacent reject the idea that a league title they thought had become theirs to keep could possibly be taken from them, and certainly not by some team from the frozen North.

When Deila and his players staged their over the top celebrations at Pittodrie after beating Aberdeen earlier in the season it smacked of premature self congratulation.

The Aberdeen manager clearly made a mental note of the moment and resolved to do something of a retaliatory nature because the Dons haven't looked back since.

Now Celtic will be playing must win league games from now on, and they'd better hope they still remember how to do that after getting things all their own way for a long time.

The Gran Canaria exercise for Celtic means Aberdeen have the chance to build up a psychological advantage by assembling an impressive lead at the top of the table.

Points in the bag are always better than games in hand and whenever Deila has been placed under severe pressure he betrays signs of being un-used to stress and strain.

Vertigo is a complication when you want to scale the summit. Just ask Phil The Power.