We're on our way to Iceland & the return of Chuck at Rangers

Article by e-Celtic's Jim Payne

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The World Cup continues on its exhilarating way and we have hardly started Wimbledon yet Celtic already knows that in three weeks’ time it starts the 2014/5 season with the first leg of a Champions League Qualifier against KR Reykjavik of Iceland. The first leg of the tie has been scheduled to take place in Scotland although Celtic is negotiating with the Icelandic side to have the first leg played in the Icelandic team's capital with the return at Celtic’s ‘home’ ground. Celtic’s motivation for seeking the switch is not clear to me- I have never been sure whether it’s a good idea to play the first leg away or at home.

Whilst the Iceland national team has been no pushover for decades now the club sides of that country haven't made so much of an impact but I'd imagine that KR will be physically strong and also more match fit than Celtic , fired up and skilled enough to fancy its chances. Ronny Deila and his coaching staff would be very stupid to underestimate the Icelanders. I trust that neither the coaching staff nor the Celtic team will.

All three of Deila's predecessors started their career with defeats in Champions' League qualifiers with only Tony Mowbray's team of 5 years ago managing to overcome the first leg deficit and qualify for the next round but this tie is a round earlier than the matches played by those previous teams so I can't say that it’s a like-for-like comparison but given Celtic's unwelcome flair for losing to theoretically much weaker teams in domestic cups and the likelihood of the new coach being highly unlikely to have either a full squad or any new players at his disposal then this can be said to be a potential banana skin. As Celtic's home tie won't be played at Celtic Park which is being used for the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games then it becomes an even bigger test.

I doubt though that KR Reykjavik are a budding Real Madrid or even remotely in the class of Artmedia Bratislava or Sporting Braga ( teams that ensured the start of the reigns of Gordon Strachan and Neil Lennon were calamitous) but I'd imagine Reykjavik side will be a harder task than Cliftonville whom we played at the same stage last season. But I'd be very surprised if Celtic gets knocked out*

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This is a blog written by a Celtic fan though I do not believe that bars me from discussing any other club. Others may disagree. Sticks and stones, sticks and stones…

At the beginning of last week a story circulated these parts which suggested that Mr Charles Green was itching to become involved in the running of Rangers again. The story hasn't quite taken off but it was a salutary reminder that all is far from well with the club which plays out of Ibrox Stadium.

Green was not a conspicuous success for anyone [except Charles Green of course] when he was in charge at Ibrox before. The breezy Yorkshire-man started off by failing to negotiate a Company Voluntary Arrangement that therefore plunged the 140 year old club into liquidation. The new company set up and run by him has got through £67m in two years competing in the two lower leagues of Scottish football and has needed emergency cash injections from a director and a hedge fund to stave off a further 'insolvency event'. The original Rangers always made great play of its 'dignity' but there was nothing dignified about Chuck's time in charge as the new company hierarchy washed its dirty laundry pretty much in public. The suspicion is that Green never really went away but whatever the truth I'd be surprised if anybody wanted him back.

Green though did carry out one very successful sleight of hand in his time and that was to convince many people [and not just the Rangers fans who were understandably desperate for reassurance after the financial fiascos of the David Murray and Craig Whyte reigns] that the Rangers that plays now is a continuation of the same organisation that had been playing since 1872. Right up to the day that the CVA was voted down and Rangers was placed in Liquidation Green had peddled the line that liquidation meant the end of everything that had gone before. Nobody said anything to contradict him. And then Rangers go into Liquidation and actually it is still the same Rangers simply because old Chuck says so.

Frankly I am fed up with the Rangers story. If you want to believe that it's the same club then feel free even though I think you are wrong. But I am also fed up with Celtic fans - and the fans of other clubs- insisting that because Rangers 'died’ what replaced it should be known as Sevco. It was funny for about the first thousand times but now we are approaching seven figure usage it is a touch boring. A club calling itself Rangers that plays in the stadium the old Rangers played in is playing. The new club has a very big support and that support still sings the same old songs. Whether it’s a continuation of the old club or a two year old one it exists and it plays in the same city as my club and it may well play in the same division as Celtic from the summer of 2015 onwards. All that makes Rangers a concern to me. I am concerned that the motivation and probity of those who run that club is so obviously questionable whilst those who aspire to run that club seem to have learned absolutely nothing from the gargantuan errors of those who ran the old Rangers close to and into extinction.

Just over two years ago when Rangers was clearly heading off its very own financial cliff there were many, myself included, who hoped that the new Rangers that was always going to come into existence would be a more sober, realistic organisation than the one that killed itself but sadly that never happened. Instead the new organisation both during and after Green's time wallowed and festered , complaining that everyone was out to get them whilst those who were part of the various new hierarchies contrived to make fortunes for themselves. The current regime and its antagonists led by Dave King seem, to this outsider, not just to have no sustainable vision for the club they represent and/or purport to love that will guarantee even its short-term well-being. In addition the reality seems merely that they are intent on tearing Rangers apart. Green hardly seems likely to bring peace to the table. It is a god-awful mess that shows no signs of being cleared up.

And that despite what some deranged folk may say is not a 'Timmy Conspiracy' and nor is it, now, even remotely funny unless you enjoy watching Three Stooges Movies every waking minute of every day. What it actually is is SAD.

*We're doomed!

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