THE LONG GOODBYE HAS ALREADY BEGUN
IT’S OVER. The thrill has gone. Separation will be a costly business, perhaps prohibitively so in the immediate term, but it is never going to work with Mark Warburton and Rangers. Not now. Just as with poor old Ronny Deila across Glasgow last year, The Long Goodbye is upon us whether all those held in the grip of this failing relationship have reconciled themselves to it or not.
Too much has gone on. Too much has been said. A fair amount of it in Warburton’s typically intransigent reaction to that second pasting of the season at Tynecastle.
His remarks came as little surprise, really. They added weight to the suspicion the wheels have come completely off the buggy, but they hardly bucked the trend.
He will never admit that this is a team simply failing to hit the mark. He will never admit that the club has lost its way in the transfer market or that battling for second place against teams with vastly inferior budgets is no kind of achievement.
Such tunnel vision, such inflexibility in words and thoughts, not to mention tactics, is a considerable part of the problem.
To learn and improve, it is surely necessary to be properly, unsparingly self-reflective. Such thinking does not appear to come easily to Warburton, though, with full-back James Tavernier’s dismissal of Wednesday’s savaging at Hearts as a ‘speed bump’ hinting at an entire football department suffering from alarming levels of delusion.
‘If (Celtic) won four games less, they would be 13 ahead. If we had won one of our games, it would be 10,’ said Warburton. Where to begin in analysing that statement? The prescription of a mild sedative, probably.
The manager still has his supporters at the club, but is this kind of attitude expressed in recent days really likely to win back those questioning their faith?
We’re talking about the kind of attitude which states coming second, no matter the points total, will represent a box ticked. The kind of attitude which states Emerson Hyndman should be taken off at Tynecastle out of courtesy to parent club Bournemouth.
The kind of attitude which states Aberdeen and Hearts, who have torn their squad apart since losing to Birkirkara of Malta, somehow bridge a large financial gap through being ‘battle-hardened’ in Europe.
Such remarks just feed into the long-held suspicion that Warburton has never quite grasped the depth of the remit at Rangers.
Contrary to his view, the inability to win big games on the road is a gargantuan issue. Referring to wins at Firhill and Dens Park as some kind of compensation is bemusing, to say the least, and unlikely to impress chairman Dave King.
For a board swept to power on a ticket of openness and transparency, we hear precious little from those in the war room, but it is impossible not to keep returning to King’s words in the wake of November’s AGM.
‘We would always be a strong No2 club if that was our ambition because our resources, even at the current level, are way beyond what is available to Aberdeen and Hearts,’ he stated. ‘But that is not what the ambition is.’
It gave the impression he had Warburton’s card marked way back then. There has been nothing since to suggest chairman and manager are back on the same page.
King, of course, has his critics, too, with the situation complicated by the fact there is no sense of mass revolt against Warburton within the fanbase.
Defeat in the Scottish Cup to Morton might change that, but this is unlikely to resolve itself quickly thanks to the ill-considered way fresh three-year contracts were handed to the management team before the transition from the Championship to Premiership could be assessed. There is cash at stake for all parties here.
There is also the matter of Warburton’s reputation. He has often likened the testosteronedriven world of his former life in The City to the dressing room. Perhaps he feels an open admission of failure would be seen as a weakness in that environment.
Alternatively, making ever more regular mention of the financial advantage Celtic possess could be seen as a ploy, an exit strategy, a plea for understanding as the man who could take a cash-strapped institution no further.
He cut himself off mid-sentence the other day, seemingly close to stating that he doesn’t sense the same negativity about him down south as he does here. There is a feeling he has always had an eye on maintaining his profile there and he has not been unsuccessful.
He was, after all, being touted for the England Under-21 job given to Aidy Boothroyd. A job like that, in truth, might be good for him because developing young players is one area in which he does speak with real enthusiasm and purpose.
That is not to say Warburton has been without occasional moments of clarity in this confusing season.
Reacting to remarks made by Ally McCoist in September about Rangers being ‘two or three years away’ from challenging for the title, he said: ‘We have to be quicker than that. If those timescales are accurate, and I hope they’re not, then I won’t be here.’
What hopes for the future he held back then. What rare prescience too.
All lost in the strange, swirling emotions of an affair in which no one really seems to be feeling the love any more.