Five years on, it’s more of the same

WE are five years on from the St Valentine’s Day Massacre. And The Journey, that long march to a promised land where trophies rain from the skies, has ground to an ugly and unedifying halt.

Amid reflective thoughts on how far Rangers have come since being pitched into administration back on February 14, 2012, let us accept that the Ibrox club are most definitely not where they want to be. Not even close.

Such a disastrous loss of forward motion was always going to prompt a drastic reaction. But if you think Mark Warburton — a manager out of his depth, certainly — is responsible for the biggest missteps taken by Rangers over the past year, well, more fool you.

Dave King (right) and his fellow board members, the absentee landlord and his representatives at Ibrox, have squandered whatever momentum this footballing juggernaut once borrowed from its enormous army of fans.

If they are unlikely to now take up pitchforks to march on Ibrox in protest, they cannot stand silently by while their club is allowed to drift further off course. They must demand better of those at the helm.

Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of the great downfall, a desperate act by a desperate man that would eventually lead Rangers on a path to liquidation, asset-stripping and a succession of chancers promising deliverance from the depths of hell. Or the Third Division, as they called it back then.

Partial deliverance is no kind of salvation. Fans who have endured plenty of indignities in order to keep the flag flying are not going to be fooled into forgetting bold promises made — and broken — in a season of retreat.

Consider events of recent days. And ask yourself what the reaction would have been had the Easdales still been in charge. Consider the furore that would have been unleashed by such a ham-fisted, fat-fingered mis-handling of something so straightforward as the dismissal of a head coach.

Have Rangers travelled a million miles from that bitterly cold and confusing night in Dumfries, when Ally McCoist couldn’t even tell the world whether or not he’d resigned?

Are the current custodians of Rangers even one per cent more capable than a comically amateurish regime who famously misspelled McCoist’s name when finally admitting to his departure?

The confusion over whether Mr Magic Hat disappeared or was made to vanish, while entirely in fitting with much of the first team’s confused display this season, reflects poorly on those running the club.

Ditching the manager by email, only to have him deny that he’d actually gone, then bitching about his failings in an undignified statement? That’s not leadership.

King’s statement referencing a ‘relatively untested management team’, meanwhile, makes it sound as if they always knew the appointment of Warbs was a gamble.

Okay. But you took that punt, Mr King. You invested because, in your judgment, the former Brentford boss represented a good choice.

All clubs get it wrong. The good ones, the organisations with a bit of class about them, admit to mistakes and quietly pay off the flops before examining why they erred. Then they hope to avoid making the same error.

Inevitably, Rangers must be compared to Celtic. Not just on the field of play, but in the way the clubs are run. That’s just life in Scottish football. Any thoughts on how the rivalry is playing out at the moment?

The reigning champions completely and totally messed up when they appointed and then stuck with Ronny Deila, a lovely man who was never up to the job. If they delayed the inevitable too long, at least they finally admitted to the howler, packed him off with something for his troubles — and replaced him with a guy who had managed Liverpool.

If you’re wondering why Rangers are rushing to appoint Alex McLeish on at least a short-term basis, incidentally, the answer can be found in the whole Deila/ Brendan Rodgers/Warburton triangle.

McLeish’s arrival would be more than just the footballing equivalent of comfort food for supporters. A club the size of Rangers needs someone proven in a similar environment.

Warburton never got it. He singularly failed to grasp the enormity of the job — and repeatedly stocked his team with players entirely ill-suited to the environment.

Now, if we assume the Ibrox board have neither the wherewithal nor the persuasive skills to land someone with experience at, say, Manchester United, then that leaves them with only one option.

They go for someone who has done this job before. Someone who won’t take six months to understand the nuances and subtleties involved in managing this particular club.

Of course, whoever comes in will have to work under the same leadership in the boardroom. A group of investors who have failed to deal with Mike Ashley, failed to understand that Rangers under Warburton were never going to challenge Celtic.

No doubt they’ll be patting themselves on the back now, congratulating each other on decisive action to remove the menace in the manager’s office. As if that was the only thing dragging them all down another catastrophic cul-de-sac.

“Ditching the manager by email is just not leadership”