I presume the majority of folk here are saying the league is over to prevent feeling 'foolish' at the end of the season for not giving up on the team at the earliest opportunity?
Would the same people want the team to give up as easy?
This is your club, no surrender. You NEVER know what can happen.
After the Hearts and Aberdeen games I would have agreed.
The problem is that we got no response and dropped a further 5 points to Killie and St Johnstone.
After Aberdeen 0-0 we were effectively 4 behind but you could see that Tims still had Motherwell, Aberdeen, Livi, Hibs and us all away before the split. So it looks still possible at that point.
What we needed SO badly was to see the players come out at Kilmarnock and just play them right off the park. 2 or 3 nil win. When we screwed that up it was basically 7 behind and now it looks dodgy.
So what we then needed was a significant winning run. Probably every game up to the split and hope they get a daft draw somewhere so that we go into split only 2 behind.
Instead what we got was yesterday.
Depending on beating them home and away in March and April is a big BIG ask for any Rangers side.
So lets say we do it. Dropping this 9 point lead right back down to 3. We are still relying on the tims screwing up twice (due to that goal difference) and we also need to basically win every match we play.
I feel foolish saying I think we can win the league now because realistically I don't think we can pick up two wins against them and I have doubts about picking up wins against Aberdeen, Motherwell, etc after the split.
The way it's looking now they could come to Ibrox on the 15th of March and if luck goes against us they will be 12 points clear with 7 games to go.
The only way we win this league now is if they have one the most catastrophic collapses in the history of Scottish Football. While I do very much enjoy the thought of that the odds are not good.
Yup. You never know what can happen in football. In 2005 we were 5 points behind with 4 games to go and somehow we celebrated being champions that season.
There's a difference between that and being realistic and sensible in the moment.
Sure. If we beat Hamilton next Weds and they lose to Livingston then MAYBE something is on but that would depend entirely on us going on a winning run that caused them to panic. We just seem like we won't be able to do that.
As it stands our remaining 11 games look dodgy and I could easily see us dropping a good few points in the run in. As a result of that we are not applying the kind of pressure that could cause the tims to drop points.
Had we come out of the winter break with a run of 8 league wins the tims would have lost their swagger and dropped points as their confidence evaporates. Instead we have lost our way completely and dropped points in half of the league games since we came back.