THE CLOWN IS DEAD - LONG LIVE THE CLOWN:

Alex McLeish is the top manger in the Scottish game and, now that it’s the 3rd of June, Martin O’Kneel is finally away back hame, a loser (in football terms, obviously!) Gordon Strachan is the new manager of our number one opponents … and, by the time he’s finished (December 2005, in a strait jacket), the team he REALLY suppoted as a boy, Hibs, will be our number one opponents.

If what’s just left was the fiercest opposition we’ve faced since Jock Stein then I think we kicked its ass - a blip on the history books was the best it could manage and The Rangers have shown that, even in times of prescribed adversity, we still come away as champions!

Martin O’Kneel leaves Scottish Football with three league titles, three Scottish cups, a league cup and a losing European final to his name: It’s a reputable collection. But it’s less - FAR less when you take in two European trophies WON - than Sir Alex Ferguson notched up at Aberdeen with a tenth of O’Neill’s resources. In his three full seasons of head-to-head with O’Neil, McLeish has won two SPL titles to O’Neill’s one.

Basically, a former charge of a rejected Rangers striker has been enough to show Rangers will suffer no post-Stein dynasties from the green half of this city: If Martin O’Neill is the greatest Celtic manager since Stein - and he absolutely is - then it says more about the parlousness of modern day Celtic FC than it does about The Mighty Gers.

O’Neill was a terrible TV pundit but a fantastic manager - Gordon Strachan is the reverse.

That which has just left was the best they had to offer in terms of overhauling The Gers overall supremacy of the last twenty years - and we beat it.

Yes, troops - Rangers@openFootball is back. Thanks to all those who kept it ticking over on the threads during my Stella Artois-infused sabbatical. This is just the briefest of rants to get us back on track - over the next few days and weeks we can really get down to re-capping on what was a glorious end to the season - and what turned out to be a season with a glorious end. Since the last weekend of last July - maybe even since May 2003 - we’ve earned our forthcoming weeks of sitting in front of this website saying things like “Yes, that’s a good point you make, 1967Bhoy, but, if you’ll look at it from my POV, you’ll find that Rangers are, well, CHAMPIONS!”.

There’s no more arguments. June will be a month of facts … and fun.