In the league this season, Rangers have been on a hiding to nothing. A thrashing of one of their part-time third division opponents is met with sneers of "they were only playing Elgin/Clyde/East Stirling". On the rare occasions that they slip up, such as against Montrose at Ibrox last weekend, when Gable Endie midfielder David Gray actually literally slipped up as he hit a long range effort and the ball looped over Neil Alexander and into the top corner for an improbable late equalizer, they are mocked with "how can you not beat Montrose at home!".
In truth, neutrals expected nothing less than the footballing equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters from Ally McCoist's side this season. There were claims from some of the more, shall we say, optimistic (it's a choice between that adjective and 'lunatic') Rangers supporters that, despite having to play in the third division, a 'quadruple' involving the League Cup, Challenge Cup and Scottish Cup was a realistic possibility. The Challenge Cup campaign ended with a penalty shoot-out defeat at home to Queen of the South. After knocking Motherwell out of the League Cup, expectations were high when they took on another SPL team at Ibrox in the next round...only to be beaten 3-0 by Inverness. Their Scottish Cup campaign takes them to Tannadice on Saturday; unless they avoid defeat, it will be their last game against full-time opposition this season.
Rangers have also dropped enough points so far this season that the record for points in the third division, set by Gretna in 2004-05, is already beyond them. That said, they have, at the time of writing, a 20 point lead over the chasing pack - even if second-placed Queen's Park have three games in hand, it is clear that promotion is a formality. But performances have not been consistently impressive. Some of the loyal old pros have kept their standards high - Lee McCulloch, named captain, has scored 22 goals already despite spending as much time playing in defence and midfield as he has up front. Left-back Lee Wallace has also been outstanding, as you'd expect from a Scottish international playing against fourth-tier opposition. David Templeton, when fit, has wreaked havoc.
But for every high earner who has given their all, there has been one who has been so mediocre that the phrase 'wage thief' comes to mind. Whilst I can forgive the youth players who are playing well only in patches - they are still finding their feet, after all - it's harder to be patient with the likes of Neil Alexander, Ian Black, Dean Shiels and Francisco Sandaza. Each are earning approximately £5,000 a week; to put that in perspective, some of the Montrose players they faced on Saturday make £175 a week. Alexander has looked less like a former Scotland international and more like a guy pulled from the crowd and given a pair of gloves. Black has cut a frustrated figure, a target for opposing hatchet-men who know he can be easily riled into retaliation. Shiels has been dogged by injuries, but when available his efforts pale in comparison to those of Templeton. Sandaza, meanwhile, has managed just two goals for the club. Last season, the Spaniard was one of the best predators in Scottish football, but since joining Rangers he has shown the explosiveness of a sloth and is about as mobile as a glacier.
As for some of the other signings, is it any surprise that Kevin Kyle is constantly injured, or that Brazilian defender Emilson Cribari has not really taken to the copacabana environment of the Scottish third division?
The most impressive thing about Rangers this season, by a distance, has been their supporters.
Yes, there are still some bad eggs in there - it was easy to hear 'Billy Boys' being belted out during a recent televised game in Peterhead, while my visit to Belfast last week was a painful reminder of what the club stands for in that part of the world, as about half of the loyalist 'flag protestors' that I saw at the City Hall that Saturday afternoon wore Rangers gear. But you can't fail to be impressed by sell-out crowds to see teams like Queen's Park and Elgin pitch up at Ibrox. As documented in a previous blog, I was pleasantly surprised by I what I witnessed at a match in October. Even when the players were making a hash of it, the fans kept up a terrific atmosphere.
So what struck me about the BBC highlights of the Montrose game were the number of empty seats that could be seen throughout Ibrox. It wasn't dramatic - not like the wide open spaces you frequently see in the stands at Celtic Park for league games - but it was surely the first time this season that more than a few tickets in the home end went unsold.
Maybe it was a one-off. But maybe it's the first sign of the only thing that the club's Chief Executive, Charles Green, fears: apathy.
Green has rubbed up almost everyone that matters in Scottish football the wrong way this season, the effect, intentional (being cynical, I think it is) or otherwise, has been to galvanise Rangers fans to get behind their team, if only as a two-fingered salute to other clubs. He's done everything possible to keep the club in the public eye, from slaughtering the SPL's reconstruction plans, to announcing a supporters boycott of the upcoming Dundee United cup fame, to appointing Jim Traynor as the head of PR - a job many would say he was doing for free whilst pontificating on the Gers' behalf on BBC Radio Scotland for years.
Green has already acknowledged that Rangers won't be profitable this season. The only way he and other investors can get a return on their cash is to keep attracting customers, as prize money and TV income are a fraction of what they were in the top flight. The narrative of 'Rangers climbing the leagues, winning every division, beating every team in Scotland and fighting, against all the odds, to once more take their rightful place at the top of the tree' has worked so far, but keeping it going for three years of climbing the SFL looked like a tall order. That probably explains the decision to sign SPL players on high wages rather than cheaper lower league journeymen - fans are more likely to watch David Templeton than guys like Kenny Deuchar, who climbed the leagues with Gretna.
But if fans are getting bored of watching the same outcome most weeks - Rangers huff and puff and toil for about an hour, before their superior fitness and class eventually tell and they run out two-nil winners over their inferior opponents - then the club's owners have a problem on their hands. Will they be any more entertained when the opposition are Alloa, or Falkirk, if the games turn out roughly the same?
And you can certainly understand why they are so against the idea of a 12-12-18 setup - instead of promotion this season, they would have to play Stirling, Annan et al again next year, and would be no closer to getting back to the top flight and, most importantly, the lucrative games against Celtic than they would be under the current setup. Green's suggestion of 14-14-14 is surely because it would be easier to justify sticking Rangers in the second tier, one year ahead of schedule.
Frankly, even getting 30,000 in the ground every week would be impressive, in my book. But Green needs to get more than that through the turnstiles for each home game for the next two and a half years. Can he do it?
L.
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