The new football season has only just begun and, for the Rangers, it can’t end soon enough.
The Ibrox hierarchy have endured a hellish week. A £40m prize money was buried six feet under after the death of another Champions League campaign. A £4m life insurance premium went up in smoke when they failed to make it to the play-off round.
As they moved through the five stages of grief, supporters went from denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, all the way to apathy.
The team’s apathy will be clear when a team short of quality kicks off against St Johnstone in Saturday night’s televised Premier Sports Cup match at Hampden.
If the crowd exceeds 20,000, they should replace the half-time cakes with medals of bravery.
Rangers players walk out after disastrous defeat to Dynamo kyiv at Hampden
Clement is furious with the umpire for sending off Jefte, but the Rangers weren’t good enough that night
A terrible night went from bad to worse when full-back Yilmaz was carried off on a stretcher.
More than one person voted with their feet during the grim Champions League exit against Dynamo kyiv on Tuesday night.
For any club, the loss of £40m for reaching the group stage would be as painful as picking a scab off a festering wound.
When the club in question is shelling out rent money to use Hampden to the SFA because they took an unnecessary risk with steel imported from China, selling players to fund new ones and arguing over the terms of a legal kit deal agreement in the Court of Session, it’s like flushing a winning lottery ticket down the toilet.
Not even a touch with your hand on the U-bend will get it back into place.
An unfair red card for Jefte early in the second half was a poor decision but it should not obscure the fact that Rangers posed limited threat to Dynamo goalkeeper Georgiy Bushchan with 11 men, let alone ten.
Philippe Clement’s lack of a clear plan was compounded by the manager’s failure to spot the danger signs when Jefte was booked in the first half and received a harsh look from the Italian referee for another foul minutes later.
In retrospect, the management is easy. But if Vaclav Cerny was not fit to start, it is fair to ask why he was fit to play at half-time.
Or, for that matter, why did he replace Ross McCausland instead of the reserved Jefte?
Cerny was the key man against Motherwell and could have been the man to lift the strange atmosphere of the first half against Dynamo. Now it’s a question of theory.
After his harsh words to the referee on the pitch at the end of the game, Clement did not put much stock in reports of a video apparently showing striker Danilo limping into the Hampden dugout and looking, by all accounts, like a player towing a caravan. If this is how the Brazilian walks when fit, it would be a shame to see him walking in a football boot.
In a new twist to Glasgow’s wet summer, snow continued to fall from the sky. The club’s new marketing adviser, Blaine McConnell, was sacked after unfortunate images emerged which proved conclusively that he was, in fact, a Celtic idiot prone to reckless outbursts on social media.
While McConnell can console himself with a seat at Parkhead for the first derby of the season on September 1, true Rangers fans will not be allowed in. Once again.
Just when it seemed sanity had prevailed with a deal to reinstate away ticket allocations for this season, Celtic made it clear they do not trust their city rivals to complete the work necessary to fulfil their end of the bargain for the game against Ibrox Old Firm on January 2.
Many fans wondered why Cerny did not play from the start against the Ukrainians.
Rangers missed out on a potential £40m prize by crashing out of the Champions League
Promises of jam for tomorrow will not protect Clement or President Bennett
With left-back Ridvan Yilmaz now facing six weeks on the sidelines, the only place Rangers fans will be watching that game will be through the cracks of their fingers.
Some have seen enough. A statement from the Rangers Supporters’ Association accuses the club’s board of incompetence and demands that they improve their game with immediate effect.
All in all, it wasn’t a great week.
A new word is being used among Celtic and Rangers fans to sum up the current rift between the two clubs. And it’s not in the New Oxford Dictionary.
‘Espanyolification’ describes a scenario in which Rangers become the Espanyol to Celtic’s Barcelona.
Rival clubs in the same city, divided by politics, finances and, consequently, fortunes on the playing field.
Since Dave King took over at Rangers in 2015, they have had six permanent managers and five caretaker managers. While Celtic have won 21 trophies, including five trebles, their rivals have won just three titles.
They have no chief executive or academy director, they have been forced to opt for their own stadium, the model of player exchanges is outdated and the squad is far from the levels of the past.
It’s all well and good that chairman John Bennett has extended Clement’s contract, vowing to break the “rinse and repeat” cycle and promising better days ahead.
The problem is that Rangers dropped two points to Hearts on Matchday 1, are out of the Champions League and if they lose to Celtic in two weeks’ time, all those promises of jam for tomorrow will not protect the manager and chairman from a bitter and lingering aftertaste.
A cautionary tale of two VERY different forwards
In the summer of 2022, Aberdeen signed two new foreign strikers. And what different paths they have taken!
Bojan Miovski spent his two years in the Granite City forging an expensive transfer to one of the world’s best leagues while being a model professional.
Luis “Duk” Lopes, on the other hand, started out like a runaway train before crashing headfirst into the bumpers. Now he spends his days pensive at home, with his toys scattered on the floor, and, inexplicably, that is his choice.
Duk, above, went AWOL while fellow striker Miovski earned a big move to La Liga
This week, Miovski deservedly joined Girona, La Liga’s third-best side, for a club-record fee of £6.8m.
Blessed with his goalscoring ability, the Macedonian was a £3m target for Espanyol and, even when the offer was rejected, there was no anger, histrionics or tantrums. He kept his head down and left Aberdeen for Spain wiping tears from his eyes, a modern-day folk hero.
Now you could pay good money for Duk’s opinions on the matter. From day one, the Cape Verdean striker looked the more explosive talent of the two, scoring 18 goals. Even when the well ran dry before Christmas, he received offers from clubs in the Netherlands and Spain.
Neither met Aberdeen’s rating and by the time pre-season training began last month Duk had gone AWOL. Left with no other option, the Dons took disciplinary action.
Miovski used the Premier League as a platform to propel his career to new heights and left for the highest fee ever paid for a non-Old Firm outfield player in Scottish football history.
Duk used the Premier League as a platform to display his petulance and sense of entitlement. Dumb enough to accept bad advice, he is now persona non grata, his reputation in tatters. Stupid boy hardly describes him.
