Both sides of the Old Firm can be summed up thus when it comes to protecting, enhancing and even advancing their own ‘brand’; Celtic indeed have a Tiger, and by comparison, Rangers FC is a collection of kowtowing pussies.
It was vomit inducing; Walter was talking about how ‘both of us’ had to go elsewhere 'for the sake of the Scottish game.’ Mowbray on the other hand only wanted to talk about how Celtic (only Celtic) would eventually hold their own in England.
I mean here we have Walter Smith, a guy steeped in Rangers for all of his lifetime, and Mowbray a yahoo for all of five minutes by comparison and I know which viewpoint I wanted my manager to put across. Pass me the sick bucket, please.
It is high time, in fact, in my opinion, the time has now passed for Walter and his assistant to be sat down and given a little homily on appeasement and the consequences of it. They would in fact do well to read Winston Churchill’s words on the subject. ‘An appeaser’ he said’ ‘Was someone who fed a Crocodile, hoping it would eat him last.’
I’m not overly convinced these days that this pair would get the message Churchill was trying to convey, or would appreciate it. In fact I’m convinced Ally would make a joke about car insurance. The problem is, he ain’t half as funny as Aleksandr the Meerkat.
As if this wanting to be ‘all pals at the pally’ with the Yahoos wasn’t bad enough to be going on with, Walter then only went and delivered up to us on Tuesday evening a result which is, by far and away, our single most humiliating European result in our history. No ifs. No buts.
Where do you start? It was a complete and total embarrassment. An absolute outrage. A humiliation against a team of unknowns and non-entities. A team who played to around six hundred people the Saturday previous (that’s how big they are). A team who gave us a goal of a start within two minutes, ‘in oor ain midden’, and still came back to whack us Sevilla style. A team whose biggest signing cost a tenth of what we shelled out for Kyle Lafferty.
The only good thing to come of this result is that Walter’s theory (which is embraced by at least 95% of this present day Rangers support) that you need money to compete at the highest level, went, not with a whimper, but with a bang. It’s a pity he, and his two assistant stooges, don’t go with the aforementioned bang.
Sorry Walter, to compete at the highest level, what you need first and foremost are players who can trap a ball instantly, and are at least happy to work at the failings in their game to come up to scratch in training. Oh, and most importantly of all, a management structure that gets the best out of said collection of so-called professionals. There is absolutely no chance of that happening any time soon.
So am I being overly hard on the manager given the financial restrictions placed upon him these days? In my opinion, the answer is - you have got to be fecking joking!
The fact is, Walter Smith has had a half decent ‘housekeeping’ allowance granted to him over the last couple of years by his benevolent pimp, compared to the monies thrown at his two predecessors, McLeish and Le Guen. Boughera and Alexander apart, potentially in better climes, he has squandered it all. Six million pounds spent on McCulloch and Lafferty: it says it all.
McLeish and Le Guen were given pennies, but that has never been the case for Walter. Why is that? I’ll tell you why. Because the chairman knew his pal could not exist in the bargain basement. We are in the grubber just now because Murray needed his pal to come back to save face; but he is a pal with add-ons. Thirty million worth of crap add-ons and getting rid of Hutton and Cuellar into the bargain to be precise.
Am I just anti-Walter Smith? Goodness knows I was less than chuffed last time round because I felt a team with three genuine world-class talents in different areas on the park, backed up with a surrounding cast of half decent players, were ridiculed more often than not on the continent. So, that has to tell you something.
This time around has given us the high of the first three games in the CL group of two seasons ago. A group that ended in a 3-0 home defeat, but ultimately led to a European final in the lesser tournament.
This season we are a complete joke. Yet it is not Walter’s performances ON the park as such that worry and weary me, it is his performances OFF it.
Let’s put it this way, when the likes of Graham Spiers (the discredited journalist) can quote a Rangers manager to have a pop at the Rangers support, as he did in the light of Rangers giving tickets to British Soldiers, with impunity, then the game is up.
Then we have Walter’s European record there for show. Two wins out of his last EIGHTEEN European games.
Mr Smith; Please go, just go, and take the other two stooges with you.
PS, If you could take Murray also, I’d forever be in your debt.