As supporters of the Rangers Football Club we expect a lot it is fair to reflect. That level of expectancy comes with the title which befits the club so well – the world’s most successful club. However, in the past few weeks we have played pretty much every emotional card we as a support have, excitement, anxiety and now in the opinion of this writer something that is verging on stupidity.
As the saying goes ‘The capital of Catholicism was not built in a day.’ We as supporters must individually and collectively review what it is we expect of a club which plays in a poor league, to be so poetic about the backwaters of football we turn out in. We will never be a financial power in a game ruined by Arab sheikhs, Russian oligarchs and American investors.
I put two questions to you reader - (a) what do we expect of the new guardians of a club which has no other option but to be financially prudent from present till beyond? And (b) what is expected of a certain Mr Alistair McCoist in his early days of the courtship he is having with the once much sought after Ibrox hot seat?
I know what is expected of both in a fans eye, for the owners it’s simple – players on the pitch don’t get us in too much debt and don’t charge me too much to watch my team. McCoist has the ‘simple’ task of delivering the league title at each time of asking.
To cover point ‘A’ we must re-cast our minds to the times of excitement we felt on the 6th of May, 2011 and then even later to times of old, yes back to the glorious days of Laudrup, Gascoigne et al which concluded with days of Østenstad, Capucho and Khizanishvili. The excitement was caused by our great club being rid of David E Murray by a consortium lead by Craig Whyte. Yes, Murray brought to us glorious days where trophies were delivered, European goals were set and we had an open bank book but key to these days were that – we were funded in the main by a bank, not Murray.
Whyte has came in and made it known, although the change of telling us what is going on is now biting him on the proverbial behind, we will look to spend within our means within the next five years. This will mean that if we do “front end” money then money will be further reduced in the coming years as we will have spent that budget previously. Currently yes it is required that money is used to strengthen now, but we must remain with some calm. Players will be signed but it will take time with a spending budget of around £8m to be used on four or five players that our squad will need to win the title this season. In full, Whyte is trying to communicate which is in turn causing us as supporters to become frustrated at the goings on we normally wouldn’t know about in days of old.
Onto Mr McCoist, he is taking his time to return to being Ally McCoist and ridding himself of the Sir Walter Smith persona he has quickly developed. There were in fact some positives in the elimination against Malmo, he played a formation which made sense for the opponents we faced and players which suited the system we were playing. Ortiz, Davis and Naismith were given the opportunity to progress onto GOD or Nikica Jelavic as you may know him. For me this shows that he might finally be coming of age in his new found position. If he gets his targets in before the window slams shut then he might just stop all the drama queens who have him out before December already.