The next step for Rangers? Trying to get themselves out of Scotland

IF anything remotely positive has come out of the embarrassing shambles of the past few weeks in Scottish football, it is that any chairman or chief executive heard pleading for future decisions to be made ‘for the good of the game’ can now be laughed out of court with impunity.

All that simpering about the ‘footballing family’ can safely be put to bed, too, thanks. We all see the sport in this country very clearly for what it is now.

It’s Charles Manson and the gang rather than the Waltons.

It’s a viper’s nest of stitch-ups, double-dealing and looking after your own back in which clubs up and down the chain will do almost anything to protect their piece of the pie whether sporting integrity suggests otherwise or not.

It’s every man or woman for themselves and to hell with anyone getting in the way.

For some, this is hardly news. For others, it appears to be the equivalent of discovering Santa Claus might not be all he seems.

Take Partick Thistle’s statement from yesterday on the abrupt end to the sham that was the SPFL’s Reconstruction Group — a by-product of forcing through last month’s vote on calling the season as it stands — being kyboshed by half-a-dozen teams in the Premiership before it had even put forward a proposal.

After much gnashing of teeth about how they had turned their back on legal action over their relegation from League One and just wanted to find a way for everyone to get along, they closed by insisting they will be looking after No1 from here on in.

It was written with the fury and indignation of someone wired on too much coffee. Presumably, after they had only just woken up and smelt it.

However, now that even the happy-clappy Jags, Glasgow’s self-styled good guys, are turning nasty, we can really get down to business and let this open culture of promoting self-interest play through until the bitter end.

Rangers are perfectly justified in demanding an independent inquiry into the workings of the SPFL over that vote on dishing out the prizes in the lower leagues and giving their board the right to call the Premiership in the future.

The whole thing stank. And continues to stink.

Dundee’s managing director John Nelms, one of many made to look like a naive clown after vowing to change the world through reconstruction, really ought to have another go at explaining what happened between his club’s ‘no’ vote being lost in the SPFL spam filter and miraculously turning into the ‘yes’ that won the day after an opening attempt that fell way short of the mark.

Of course, no matter the truth, those calls from Ibrox for an independent inquiry are likely to be voted down. This destructive civil war engulfing the sport will intensify. SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan might do another Q&A with himself to launch more petrolbombs at quarrelsome clubs in his unique quest for reconciliation at an organisation facing more and more serious allegations by the day.

All the while, the world and his wife will speculate over what Rangers do next.

Well, the answer seems clear. Like everyone else, they should be brazen about looking after themselves — and start planning how to get out of Scotland tout suite.

Make no mistake, they will have Celtic right beside them, drawing up the blueprint. You think their chief executive Peter Lawwell has only worked himself up to the top of the European Club Association for the air miles?

How else is this to shake down? Looking after yourself has become the lingua franca of Scottish football, so why should the Old Firm commit long-term to subsidising others?

No one else buys into helping out those below them in the pecking order — from the Premiership six who shot down reconstruction to the League Two teams who ganged up to create their own voting bloc.

Rangers have financial issues to deal with and Celtic cannot maintain a £60million wage bill in a league unable to find itself a sponsor.

The Covid-19 crisis has simply heightened the need for them to find a way to remain European standard teams in a domestic set-up ready to tumble off the cliff in flames.

What may help them is that other sizeable clubs across the continent are in the same boat. FIFA appear open to cross-border leagues. UEFA are likely to consider anything to preserve their existence and placate existing members.

Irrespective of where Celtic and Rangers are right now, they have huge, loyal fanbases and the capability to be cash cows for any new competition that may come into being. It is a selling point they must really start broadcasting as football considers how best to reconfigure itself post-coronavirus.

Scottish football is not going to change for the greater good. It can’t. It needs independent leadership, but member clubs are never going to vote for that.

That is a reality surely dawning now on those who have taken the gamble of trying to get in at the bottom end of the slagheap.

Indeed, it was poignant that some of the most insightful words uttered yesterday on the mess we are in came from one of those clubs convinced to destroy the vibrant, idiosyncratic world of the Juniors for a pyramid system that now doesn’t seem to matter any more.

Of all the victims of the past few weeks, Kelty Hearts and Brora Rangers have suffered most and should not be forgotten. They spent good money chasing their ambitions and won the Lowland and Highland Leagues.

Unlike Dundee United, Raith Rovers and Cove Rangers, though, it has been decided that promotion simply isn’t for them any longer. Brechin City are staying put in League Two.

You can make your own call on how that looks when Brechin City’s chairman, Ken Ferguson, is on the board of the SPFL.

Linlithgow Rose were one of a host of Junior teams that switched over to the East of Scotland League two years ago to join the pyramid system. Next term’s new West of Scotland League has more or less ended Junior football as a meaningful entity.

How many clubs within, though, must be wondering what they signed up for now it is clear that progressing to win one of the ‘Tier Five’ leagues can be made to mean nothing if it doesn’t suit those above you?

‘This is not to point fingers at any person or any ‘body’, but more that the constitution and governance structures of our game are not fit for purpose,’ tweeted Linlithgow manager Brown Ferguson.

‘We have a system of governance that lacks any clear leadership and accountability and an inherent structure of football that does not allow the game to develop.

‘I have not spoken to one person who believes our system is fit or right, but I am, like many others, feeling helplessly resigned to it never changing.’

And he is right. It is incapable of changing from within. Only external influences can crack it open now.

That’s certainly the road Rangers should be looking down as part of a wider move away from the aimless shouting at the moon of the Dave King era.

More than just the collateral damage from internal politicking, Kelty and Brora are the proof the game is up.

Their story, alone, is a shameful indictment of a sport that has lost its way.