Before the 1989 Scottish Cup final, Gerry McNee, a Celtic fan, said the best thing that could happen for the club would be to lose the up-coming final against Rangers.

Think for a moment how crushing it would be for any fan to admit that their team would be better off losing a big match against their rivals. History shows that Celtic won the match 1-0 to lift the cup - and it then took until the mid-90s and a rampant Rangers side cruising to nine league titles in a row for them to sort things out.

It’s sometimes difficult to summarise thoughts at a time like this. Rangers being dumped out of the Champions League by Kaunas before the SPL season has started - and without even the parachute of the UEFA Cup as consolation - is painful and utterly humiliating. The single positive is that the harsh reality of our current predicament is dawning on people and, ultimately, the Kaunas debacle could finally be what forces supporters into action.

'Even as the frustration builds, it is horrifying how comfortable some of our supporters are with abusing their own players these days'


The football forums are filled with analysis of the European exit, arguing over who is to blame and where we go from here. Armchair management is easy, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, and for all Walter Smith’s tactics and team selections last year were baffling, we tolerated it because it looked as if it would work. Grit, determination, heart and passion are welcome traits but they can only take a team so far.

When you look at a Rangers line-up these days, it’s a task to try to figure out who’s playing where and which formation we’re using. I get the feeling Walter Smith loves this since it no doubt confuses the opposition manager, but a lack of consistency is crippling the team. Even across just the two Kaunas games, a few friends and I debated the manner with which the team would line up given the players selected and we managed to come up with a few different permutations - none of which were right!

Take Steven Whittaker, Kirk Broadfoot and Christian Dailly. If all three are in the team, there are numerous different combinations that Smith can use for the midfield, wing back and defensive positions. When you look at other clubs, you know a rough first XI that will feature and if you name a player then the position they’ll take up is generally quite obvious. With Smith it isn’t.

Again, not being a football manager puts us in the position of questioning the man in charge and he can quite easily look down on us and ask what right we have to pass comment on his team selection, but surely it makes far more sense to play a natural midfielder, such as Dean Furman, rather than a centre-back/wing-back such as Dailly in the middle of the park? When your team is hit with injuries, as little disruption as possible seems the most sensible way forward and that means having a settled XI with players knowing their place.

As for the forward roles, that’s an article in itself. I have no idea where Lee McCulloch should be playing but he isn’t an effective winger and isn’t a central midfielder. It would also be fantastic to finally see Rangers play with two proper strikers rather than forcing strikers to play as wingers.

Bearing in mind that players do not pick themselves, they must also take some of the blame - but players need our support. When they’re in the starting XI, each of us has the choice to either support them or to hurl mindless abuse at them. Which of those is more likely to improve their performance over the 90 minutes?

Even as the frustration builds, it is horrifying how comfortable some of our supporters are with abusing their own players these days. And I don’t mean criticising, I mean abusing. The comments I’ve heard aimed at some of our young Scots is far worse than I’ve heard directed at many opposition players. It’s a very worrying culture that’s developing.

Moving on from the players and the manager, our problems are far deeper than just losing to Kaunas and having a team selection/formation lottery every week, which brings me back to my opening point.

People get organised when things hit a low. What we have to gauge as Rangers fans is how bad things have to get before we get organised and work together. Will it be four, five, six in a row before we realise change is needed at the very top of the club? As crushing as the European exit is, if it opens some people up to the idea of forcing change then we can at least take something from that.

For all the manager’s apparent flaws, the position of Rangers manager commands respect and, in my opinion, it would be to the detriment of the Rangers team to pile on pressure when our support is needed, along with consistency, and all frustration and anger must be aimed at the chairman, Sir David Murray.

Owning over 90 per cent of the club, Murray is the only person that can sort out the long-term future of Rangers and move to ensure that this isn’t going to end with four, five, six, or more titles going Parkhead way.

He has always had it easy from the Rangers support, being able to spin his way through even £80million of debt, but with the European failure, the lacklustre squad, Glasgow’s third biggest stadium and the rumours of selling our best player, he will surely be incapable of escaping the wrath of the Rangers support over this one.

“Murray out” appears on Rangers forums more frequently than ever before, but it clearly isn’t that simple. You can’t easily remove a man that owns the club so instead we must look to force him into action, whether that is ensuring this mess is sorted out or hurrying a sale of the club to Rangers-minded people that will.

There are no easy answers to this – only questions that are difficult to ask yourself and a harsh reality even more difficult to accept. The only immediate way forward is to utilise the most underused tool in football - fan power. If we sit around and complain, nothing will happen. If all we do is sit and chat on internet forums, nothing will happen. Individually we are a lone voice that won’t be listened to, but collectively we are the biggest support in this country and one which is potentially incredibly influential.

We don’t have people in the press that will tell the readers that “Scottish football needs a strong Rangers”. We don’t have people that will criticise the club for the right reasons, putting pressure on the chairman from a supporter’s point of view to encourage change for long-term gain. Instead we have people that are loving every minute of this.

It’s the Rangers support that needs to move to drag the club back to the top. We can either work together or we can watch Rangers turn into the Celtic of the 90s. Which is it to be?