There you go m8
THERE?S an old saying, you should be careful who you trample on your way up, because you might need them on your way back down.
Rarely has it applied more than in the meltdown of Rangers Football Club.
There?s an element at Ibrox who, when they were flying, wouldn?t have peed on the rest of Scottish football had it been on fire.
If you?re not with them, you?re against them. Do, say or write anything they don?t agree with and... well, they all know what you are.
That element went all the way up to David Murray and all the way down to guys like Mark Dingwall, who?s gone from running an abusive website to casting himself as spokesman for a generation.
Between them, they?ve left anyone and everyone in their sights without a name.
So what makes them think that now it?s all gone pear-shaped, the world will drop everything and help them out of the s***?
Which is not to say I believe the rank and file of Rangers supporters deserve what?s happening to their club. I?m not saying they had this day coming. Nor am I convinced the SFA?s ruling is the right one, because they shouldn?t be trusted to run a bath, never mind the national sport.
The transfer embargo makes sense, as it?s the debt run up through vanity signings that has ? in part, at least ? taken them to the brink of oblivion. But demanding money from a business who has none? Anyone who?s ever been hit with a ?30 surcharge for going overdrawn knows how illogical that is.
What is fair? I?m not sure. All I know is that to give in to rabble-rousing mouthpieces like Dingwall and let them reinvent themselves without punishment because it?s The Rangers, is a non-starter.
Where were they when Clydebank and Airdrie and Gretna were dying, when Motherwell and Dundee and Livingston were in administration?
Hitting the phone-ins to sneer that no one should weep, because there were too many clubs in Scotland anyway, that?s where.
But I?ve long since warned the excrement would really hit the extractor when a big club went belly-up, churned endless columns about how Murray?s ego-driven, My Tenner To Your Fiver bravado would end in tears. So fans? groups can re-write history all they like and pretend everything was dandy until that nasty man Whyte got his hands on them. But they?re only kidding themselves.
Yes, the SFA?s investigation centred on the chaotic reign of this chinless, gutless chancer.
But where?s the probe into Murray?s role? When are the fans going to turn their anger on a man who saw HMRC coming over the hill like a million Apaches and palmed the whole shooting match off to that chancer for a quid?
It might make the punters feel big to boycott William Hill and Vauxhall because they put cash into the SFA, but that?s going to solve nothing.
Rangers are rooked because Murray ? aided, by the likes of his namesake Paul, who sat there as they unravelled, yet now claims he?s their saviour ? hurled money at foreigners with no sell-on value, who took the club no further up the European ladder than they?d been with a team farmed in Kinning Park and Bellshill.
None of this is the fault of the SFA or their sponsors or journalists or anyone else on the most-wanted list of the No One Likes Us We Don?t Care brigade.
It?s 100 per cent at the door of men they followed blindly because they promised the earth.
Rangers, as a club, are the ones who did the crime. Now, they have to do the time.
And the worst they get is not being able to sign players for 12 months. They?ve got off with probation.
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