Century of Vanity hid truth

It’s not like we didn’t warn them.  Charles Green, with his ‘blame it on bigotry’ and ‘Rangersitis’ nonsense was an even more transparent charlatan than wee Craig Whyte.  Green moved in, fed them the nonsense they were oh so willing to swallow, and made off with their millions.  All carried out in broad daylight.

The financial realities were self-evident from day one of Newco’s existence.  For a while you had to wonder if any of vast number of fans, journalists and fan-journalists with computers had a spreadsheet between them.  But, a more powerful force than Rangersitis had taken hold – vanity.  The kind of vanity only those afflicted by a notion of supremacy are susceptible to.

Their club was liquidated, a newco was formed.  It adopted Rangers’ name while the original club was still an SFA member (and granting permission for their players to turn out for was for the time known as ‘Sevco Scotland’.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.  This isn’t an easy pill to swallow.  Around these parts people invest the kind of sentiment in their football team which goes into nationalism elsewhere, occasionally causing wars.  It’s a primitive but natural part of all of us, so perhaps we should have been more respectful of the feelings of others at the time.  Cough.

If someone was able to chart the world’s Cognitive Dissonance harvest it would have been off the chart for the last two years, brought about when a degrading reality met a supremacists vanity.  The subsequent scarcity of Armageddon (biff), Celtic’s flourishing Champions League action (bang), the new New Firm (whallop) were all late blows which none of the Jokers at Ibrox anticipated.  Even Kilmarnock managed to sort themselves out without collapsing into administration.

Without the ability to accept credit or debit cards, or with the bank’s authority to allow fans to automatically renew season tickets, the signs are written as tall as Ibrox’ Club Deck.  I can’t see more than a few thousand being prepared to throw their money into a landfill site.

Season ticket renewal deadline has been moved to a week before when next month’s wages are due.  Right now the directors have a reasonable aspiration that tens of thousands of fans will renew but on 17 May, the day after the deadline, reality should crystallise.  If there was a spread bet available, I’d put my money on administration in the days to follow.

Money talks, it don’t sing and dance and it don’t do walking away….

Yogi Bare – John Hughes fascinating autobiography, signed copies available below: