THE BAWS OF GRAVITY

Well, I’ve checked the papers, scanned the internet and spoken extensively to my lawyer: It’s official - we’re definitely out of Europe.

Amidst more post-mortems than the DVD box set of CSI Miami, there’s only one conclusion on which all the blue-hearted coroners can agree: The patient is definitely dead.

Why it happened, how it could have been avoided, who is to blame, who ISN’T to blame, how they should be punished, how we should proceed, who should walk, who should stay, who should be brought in? This is just a test tube sample of the billion questions being debated by the Beardom County Justice Department in the wake of the (pure) murder in Kaunas town.

The season would seem to be over before it’s even started. Yet when so many Rangers fans think European competition is a distraction from the real ambition of beating Celtic four times a season and winning the world-renowned SPL title, this is patently not the case.

However, it’s fair to say I will feel like an amputee for the largest possible part of 2008/2009. Every European mid-week, every Friday lunch-time UEFA draw from Nyon or Monaco, I’ll reach to scratch a phantom itch on a key part of my make-up which just isn’t there anymore.

Everyone’s looking backwards and forwards for the most volatile or hard-hitting answers. Everyone wants to find reasons as deep as the dissapointment experienced on Tuesday. This causes a lot of us to miss the mark in our conclusions. I’m no different in at least one of those respects.

My hair-brain tuppence worth, stated in relentless detail in the previous rant, saw me blaming myself and the rest of the fans, for behaving like spoiled brats so often or failing to drown out the spoiled brat voices so often that it’s impossibe for the club to have any depth of infrastructure. This, for better or worse, is how I still feel - because it’s how I felt BEFORE Tuesday and it’s how I felt before Walter even arrived for his second stint.

We have better players than Kaunas - we had them on that rain-soaked Lithuanian turf this week. But our players were being sucked into a vortex of collapsing foundations.

We’ve had four different managers in eight years. Scottish teams don’t get to European finals that much these decades. When they do they usually have a longish-term, fully-supported guru at the helm. Last season, in other words, was a phenomenal achievement with absolutely no realistic basis. Everything last season was so bravely committed, so over-reaching that the moment we stopped going forward we were always gonnae shoot wildy backwards like some over-elasticated bungee jumper.

Walter was aksed to steady the ship in the wake of Le Guen. He hit the ground running and massively over-achieved. Had this European exit happened 12 months previously, when the emphasis was on running Celtic a lot closer domestically, we would have huffed and puffed but blamed most of it on a departed Frenchman and waited for the next derby. No-one ever wanted Walter back for European success - because PLG was undefeated and making huge advances in that arena - it was all about local issues. So, now we have nothing but local issues to occupy us I don’t think we can complain too much.

Basically, I feel the Chairman’s tried so hard to give us what we want that, in following every demand of the Knee-Jerk Loyal he’s been unable to set any real long-term plan in motion at any point during the last eight years. If anything he’s trying to give the Accountancy Loyal their way and keep the club on an even enough keel for him to sell to a decent buyer and clear off. Never mind the ingratitude, he must be utterly pig sick of the abuse.

Sir Dave is simply trying to balance the books AND put an attractive sheen on the angle we put in the shop window. After the outcry about PLG he gave up building for the future. All he does now is throw patch-up solutions at the dissenters. This stops the Edmiston Drive demos but destroys any chance of creating a managerial, coaching or player dynasty. We’re flying by the seat of our pants in the 21st century. So if we exceed on-field expectations one season, we’re almost bound to massively under-achivee the following.

I’m no believer in anything supernatural and I was never christened, baptized or circumcised into any faith (Nights like Tuesday are the initiations into the Rangers religion - if ye’d still rather do nowt else than watch the Teds next time they play then yer definitely a Rangers believer!) but I wonder if I am slightly Protestant in my instincts sometimes: “We had great times yesterday - therefore we must pay with hard times today!”.

That’s a bit grim. But it’s actually an outlook borne more of pure reason: We aint got much money or much of a depth of squad yet we forged an epic season in 2007/2008 - there’s bound to be a physical and mental reaction to that. Sir Isaac Newton, another man who couldnae be arsed with run-of-the-mill god-bothering and who was nearly as clever as me, put it another way:

“For every action there is an equal, but opposite, reaction”.

The Third Law of Motion: Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi. ie If yer fae a dead wee league but one season ye get results out of teams fae Serie A, La Liga and der Bundesliga, then it follows that the following season you yerself will be turned over by a team fae a much wee-er league.

So that’s my long-term POV. If ye argue with me, yer spilling Sir Isaac Newton’s pint. (And ye’d better hope that pint hits the pub floor straight away or else yer also calling his laws of universal gravitation a poof!)

And a lot of folk - all perhaps - are arguing with me. David Murray and Martin Bain will be, I guess, the main targets for ire - they usually are. At times like this I’m traditionally a bit like Ace Rothestein in Casino when Nicky Santoro steams into that guy with a fountain pen. De Niro’s voice-over explains Rothstein has all the answers worked out in his head but is totally gormless as to the ruthlessness of how things work in the real world: “I was still wondering where the pen came from but Nicky was already stabbing the guy through the neck with it” (Nothing like the actual quote but ye get the message). I was in the middle of saying how I thought PLG had begun his reign for real by riding the storm at Fir Park when news came in he’d resigned. So, while I preach loyalty and patience, Walter may well resign by Friday or Super Ally will step into the manager’s hot-seat with Waldo “going upstairs”… or Sam Allerdyce has just booked into Devonshire Gardens … or Martin O’Neill announces he’s taken Villa as far as he could and, “as a proud Ulsterman” feels he always had an affinity with Rangers … or Jimmy Calderwood and Nicholl finally get their chance … etc, etc…

Whatever.

All I know is what I know now. Walter Smith will NEVER be sacked and should NEVER be pilloried. Yes, the whole team has been awful since pre-season began. Yes, the Franz Beckenbauer quote regurgitated by Harry Pearson in When Saturday Comes this week - “if you put all the players in a sack and beat it with a stick, whoever you hit would deserve it” - could be no more appropriate than to the squad who featured in the two Kaunas games. Yes, everyone at Rangers has some blame to share. Yes, my ideas on that score may be totally pish, but one last thing’s for sure:

We play Falkirk this Saturday.

oh, and nothing in football cures like football.

What we need is calm. So often in the Ibrox stands we’ve reacted to non-crises with hysterical bloodlust. That got us to a European final last season but, now that we’ve been punted so abruptly this season, everyone in Red, Whte and Blue seems to have forgotten the 2007/2008 UEFA Cup ever happened. Perhaps, in going so quickly from one extreme to the other on the field we can realise that off the field it’s time to find some balance and equilibrium.

For once in our lives, The Rangers support should try some perspective and patience. The worst it could get us this season is a domestic treble - that’s no mean consolation for what will be, come May 2009, a long-forgotten European exit.

I’m more guilty than anyone of dismissing domestic concerns in the aftermath of European exits. You all know I think Europe is our priority. But last season I felt as devestated as the next Bear when we saw the league title slip away from our grasp. Seeing my team in a European final was the best experience of my Rangers life but I wanted the SPL title as a consolation, as a final vindication of this team which even the idiots of the Daily Record hotline could understand. Didn’t happen - I was gutted. So the SPL is well worth the winning and, as the muted atmosphere at the first legs of the Sporting Lisbon and Fiorentina games proved last season, so many Bears just want to see Rangers winning wildly - they don’t particularly care who against.

At the end of the day, no matter who we’re playing, a Rangers goal cheers me up no end and a Rangers win always soothes the soul. More than that, as I continually tell my younger Bluenosed friends who don’t remember the late-1978 to early-1986 period, there are very few chances to become a real died-in-the-wool True Blue these days. Okay, our notions of suffering at Ibrox may insult the Stenhousemuir, East Fife, Stranraer and Aberdeen fans of the world, but when you follow the team with more league championships under its belt than any other in the world, there’s always the SLIGHT risk of being called a glory hunter.

You want the right to boast or the experience of being truly elated when we next win a European semi or even a League Cup final? Well, you have to jump on any Rangers failure as a potential once-in-a-decade chance to earn your stripes. 250,000 went to Manchester? But how many want to be at Falkirk on Saturday, in the first game after arguably the worst defeat in our history? These are The TRUEST of Blues. THESE are The People.

It’s gonnae be amazing too. It’s gonnae be intense as fuck. A few thousand cranky bears, tight on that Falkirk pitch, with room behind the goals to run from the front row of seats to the back of the advertising hoardings. You go for a pie at Falkirk, you go pitch level - you can shout anything at any player and he will hear it. There’ll be a few things to be said on Saturday twixt Bears and Gers as we all wait for a mistake or for a RESPONSE! I hope it rains harder than it did in Lithuania. I hope it’s grey and dreich and cold. Sod yer fairweather. I hope I’m still hungover from Friday night AND Tuesday. I KNOW it’s going to be one of the most emotion-packed games ever.

THIS is where we all earn our corn as Bluenoses, yet this is where we feel it best - the love of the club. Let’s look for answers rather than culprits and in that respect we can start with ourselves, the punters. Time to react, Rangers. Time to react, Bears. No marathons this season. No split intentions. Just one goal. let’s score it - together.