And another thing...

work the system he’s playing in is supposed to require.

Which does raise questions of the manager as well, to be fair.

Mark Warburton came last season with a clear philosophy and recruited towards it.

Then you look at guys like Barton and Niko Kranjcar and, quality or not, they don’t fit with how he wants to play the game.

He’s still playing them because he clearly feels he has to but he’s compromised on his ideals.

And it shows. What he’s left with now is a dressing-room fragmented by a guy who can’t even say sorry without insisting he actually isn’t. Who says he

It will be interesting to see what lessons are learned by Brendan Rodgers after Celtic’s Nou Camp doing. But has Dorus de Vries been an upgrade? There was all the fanfare about his ability to control the game with his feet – but if he’s not making saves, what’s the point?

He can’t be blamed for the goals – maybe the free-kick aside – but if I’m Craig Gordon, I’m wondering if I might have made more of a difference.

The potential debacle of an Old Firm game on Hogmanay was pointed out in this column the day the fixtures were announced. No one thought the league would be stupid enough not to switch it. Turns out they are.

Meanwhile, Rangers’ penchant for drama is unabated, as is their inability to see themselves as others see them. To portray themselves as victims yet not mention the vandalism of Parkhead’s toilets made their latest statement not worth the bog roll it was written on.

respects why the manager has suspended him then uses Twitter to “manage” his version of events, which you can bet your boots his gaffer would have wanted nowhere near the public domain.

So what now? To the outside world, his position looks untenable.

If he walks back into Auchenhowie tomorrow as if nothing’s happened, or into the team on Tuesday night, the manager looks weak and Barton looks like the cock of the north.

A cynic would say they’d be quite happy to get him off the wage bill as well because mistakes like him don’t come cheap.

But if he refuses to go, how do you get shot of him?

They sure as hell can’t afford to pay him up. There’s always misconduct to throw at him but these things can get messy.

If this is the end for him at Rangers, though, it might be the best thing that’s happened to them all season.