SEASON OLD, SEASON NEW, SEASON TICKET … SEASON THROUGH?

Well, I ain’t prepared to give up on this season just yet.

There’s no white flag at the ready. There never is. They’ll never take us alive. But there’s been a certain fatalism about the 2006/2007 season since - oh, I dunno - was it St Johnstone at home or Osasuna away? By the time Waldo took over from PLG, the pretensions to win the SPL title were more like preposterous but there’s such an air of negativity around Celtic these days that it’s well worth giving Hearts a good hiding on Saturday.

Of course, we need to beat the Jambos anyway, for (a) pride (b) second spot in the SPL and (c) to maintain the momentum under Walter, Ally and Kenny Mac. But with so many Celtic fans so volubly sick of Gordon Strachan and the pernicious, bitter twat himself so clearly ready to burst a blood vessel, ye just never know …

Well, ye DO know, actually. It’s just not gonnae happen. Smellick will win the league this season. But we should ensure they have to win it on theri own, be it at Kilmarnock or wherever. Let’s not give it to the bastards on a plate (anymore than we have done already!) and let’s make every further slip-up and piss-poor performance by the hooped haddies a cause of maximum hysteria at The Piggerry. The ship is sinking but our band can play on.

Nevertheless, odds are we’ll have to wait til December before Strachan is finally ousted by the Celtic version of what we had at Ibrox with Le Guen - a lack of patience and total myopia. And, furthermore, with one of my closer female relatives planning a wedding for “Some Saturday Next May”, there’s no doubt The Teds will be on course for the treble, as there’s NO way the fates will allow Yours Bluely to miss a MEANINGLESS game.

And today the postman brought me Sir Dave of Murray’s written apology for the fact we’ll have to wait two full years for silverware at The Palace: The word “sorry” was never actually mentioned mind you, but phrases like “a regretfully dissapointing season” and “we will fight to REGAIN the domestic title” rather than “retain” is about as much as you can expect. It’s not Dave’s fault anyway - it’s OURS. Although there were plenty of compliments for me in the same missive - I demonstrated “unwavering allegiance” and , apparently, I haven’t “waned” during “this season of change”. My dietician would beg to differ …

Anyway, the Murray Mint is charging me £489.00 to prevent further wanes and wavers on my allegiance. Fair enough - it’s Govan Rear, dead on the Copland End’s 18-yard line, half-way down the Stand. A snip at twice the price!

Think mine has gone up in price but can’t remember how much it was last season and don’t really care. If that extra tenner or twenty helps us reinforce Davie Weir’s Zimmer frame for the next season then it’s fine by me.

Davie is negotiating a new deal on Thursday and I hope my instalment payments persuade him to stay for another season. He’s at an age where he’ll just stop, let a striker past him one day and that’ll be that - finished - but I’m prepared to gamble on that day being over a year away as it’s been a pleasure watching the Ex-Jambo and Evertonian defend in our colours.

Making D Weir our Player of the Year would have been poetic (think about it!) but a bit of an insult to some of our other squad members. Most of all, probably Brahim Hemdani, the guy who won it. Well done, Brahim - yer a true pro and a class act, especially when ye were asked to play out of position by Monsieur Le Guen. Still equalised against Celtic tho, and then came back into midfield to score a belter of a goal against Osasuna, this year’s UEFA Cup winners (Oh yes indeed).

Barry Ferguson is the best player at Rangers by a country mile but I think this vote demonstrates the fact more than half the Rangers support think Baz was well out of order during the insurrection which ousted Le Guen and which resulted in Algerian-born Frenchman Hemdani, our very own Albert Camus, feeling like The Outsider. The Scottish clique didnae tell the foreign clique training was cancelled when Le Guen left - one wonders if Brahim was stuck in the middle, having been signed by Eck McLeish but knowing exactly what PLG and Yves Colleu were on about. Still, he didnae run to any newspapers, did Brahim - he just got on with being a Ranger. That’ll do pour moi!

Seen the new strip? Oh dear, dear, DEAR! The full red fold is back on the auld Red and Black socks - fantastic (altho I thought he virtually all-black jobs this season were quite smart too). But I must say the jersey looks pretty darned cheap. That’s “cheap” in the sense Karl Lagerfeld defines it - not in the monetary sense. A red, White and Blue trim is a great idea but the execution in this case, around the collar and across the shoulders like all good executions, resembles a badly squeezed marzipan detail on a toddler’s birthday cake. Not Umbro’s finest moment and reminiscent of some tacky 1970s casual-wear top for bicycle-riding American schoolkids enroute to watch Star Wars …

TALKING OF WHICH - d’ye think the talk of a tie-up with LA Galaxy is, like walking backwards for Christmas across the irish Sea, just a bit of a publicity stunt? Fuck it. Why not?! Even if there’s no real chance of us getting anything more than next month’s friendly out of Alexei Lalas’ team, just having our name associated with David Beckham’s new club is worth several squllion quid from Heat and Okay magazine. We were supposed to have a Murray Park visit from “Hello” - “Walter and Ally relax in their Milngavie mansion” - but Jack McConnell’s spin doctor has a stutter and so The First minister has banned this sectarian magazine in Scotland …

Maybe Becks, when he hits 45 years of age, will do a turn for us on the wing. Still be better than anything we got from Shizumha What’s-their-face - the orange-shirted mob from the orient …

Another of our feeder clubs, AS Monaco, has supplied us with one or two decent players down the years and been a constant source of rumoured signings. I would now like to formally place Mr Dado Prso second top of the list, behind only Mr Mark Hateley, in our greatest ever aquisitions from Monte Carlo.

Having vastly improved a WH Auden poem in honour of the Croat Leg-end just last night, the front pages of the tabloids today told me Big Dado was leaving the country as he entered it - scaring the living shite out the locals: This time in the shape of two would-be burglars. This has to be right up there with the stupidity of the gits who tried to rob Duncan Ferguson - one look at Dado in a Rangers strip, especially scoring two goals in a week against Celtic while blood streamed from his forehead in both derbies- would warn most sentient beings of the inherent danger in invading his lair. Like claiming a silver-back Gorilla just coz ye cannae be bothered going to Asda for yer bananas. But nah, two twats tried it and Dado made them look like most of the defences he’s ever taken on for Rangers - stupid, bewildered, beaten.

I’ll wait til the big man and his knee are on the very cusp of leaving for a more technical, less abrasive league before I give him the full Gers@Open Footie salute. I just hope he gets a goal or two before we have to formally say farewell to a player who, whiel not at the club long enough to be an all-time great, definitely epitomised the Spanish footie saying, sudar los colores de la camiseta.
Aaaaand, TALKING OF SPAIN (I know - painful isn’t it), let me leave you with this little admission, this tiny thought from my tiny brain:

Osasuna are now in the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup, having THRASHED Bayer Leverkusen, a side challenging for a Champions League spot in the Bundesliga at the time of their quarter-final encounter. The Pamlona boys, who could “Only” draw at Ibrox and who “only” did us 1-0 on their home patch, won 3-0 in the Bay Arena before a routine repeat of that 1-0 scoreline in the Navarre second leg.

Whose to say Los Rojillos wont go on to do Seville in the semi - unlike the Guarda Civil, the Andalucian side seem positively phobic about beating fellow Spaniards at the moment -and reach the UEFA Cup final itself, thus proving Walter maybe wasn’t as continentally clueless as some people thought after all.

Even if they don’t get to Hampden or even if they don’t lift the trophy itself, whatever Osasuna now do in the UEFA Cup we all know it’s ME I’m slagging!

Erm, sorry, Mr Smith …