Imagine that our manager had just won 3 titles in a row and decided to leave a season or so after our only rival had been booted down the leagues. Imagine we had a clean slate, no pressure, a minimum of 3-4-5-6 years unopposed CL money to aim at, were playing in a league where the nearest rivals were nowhere near and where we could literally rip up the entire fabric of the club, rebuild it in whatever manner we wanted, putting whatever foundations we wanted in place, whatever youth set up, whatever scouting network and we could do it while still pretty much walking the league. Imagine we could have picked any manager we wanted to oversee a rebuild/remodel and we were afforded the utter luxury of doing it with no pressure on the domestic front and with a yearly shot at a free jackpot. Imagine we had enough cash in the bank to openly gloat about it.
Imagine being nearly a decade down the line and having focused so hard on 'The 10' that absolutely every single advantage we had was pissed away on bringing in players to win a single title. Imagine the manager that had left us after 3 to try his luck in England had been given the 'honour' of securing that '10' and was in the process of making an arse of it. Imagine that despite that near decade of freedom, we were STILL in a position where our youth set up was producing nothing and we HAD to sell our top player every season or face economic catastrophe. Imagine being so fucking petrified of one club, several divisions below us, that we gave up the chance to remodel our own club into something that would have been impossible to catch in favour of the short term goal of 'getting one over them'.
You would be angry. You would be absolutely fucking livid. You would have seen your club literally win a lottery for millions upon millions of quid and immediately spend it all on a fancy car and fancy house, ignoring future income and the chance to invest wisely. You would have seen them enjoy the money for a decade and then wonder why they were not still rolling in it as the neighbours started to come home with better cars than them.
Ignoring what is happening now in terms of league titles in a row, our 55, whatever, the facts are fucking simple; Deep down they ALL know that they had an absolute cast iron chance to leave Rangers in a position where catching them would be nearly impossible. They could have literally built a new entire ethos/model/whatever you want to call it around themselves, unopposed, and left us behind. Even if they manage to overhaul us in this league race they all know, deep down, that they have given up a glorious chance to 'win' and that by putting so much on 'The 10' they have ignored absolutely everything else they could and should have been doing. They wanted nothing other than short term pain for us, and were so fucking myopic that they failed to see that by looking at the short term, they were missing a gaping wide open goal. Whether it is this season, next, or the one after, we will sit on top of the pile again and that is something even a little strategic thinking over the way could have stopped easily.
I am, when I think about it, delighted that they could not see their way to actually using the time they were handed on a plate but I am stunned at our luck (is it luck? We were lucky that they did not try and build, but the root of that was their hubris, rather than a random act of chance) in them being so fucking hateful that they were interested in nothing more than a cheap and ultimately meaningless bragging right.
Imagine you were one of them and once the revulsion has worn off, imagine just how angry you would be at watching that glorious open goal being ignored in favour of a chance, nothing more than that, a chance, at 'The 10'. You would be livid.
Declan, get yourself to the carpark.
