Have you had a look at the league table? No, seriously, have you had a look at the league table?
By the time we get to the split next Sunday it won’t be case of separating teams into a top six and a bottom six. It will be the top one and the bottom 11.
Celtic are second to Rangers with a 20-point deficit separating them.
That’s the distance between challengers and a lost cause.
Hibs are third but are closer on points to the bottom club Kilmarnock than to the top club.
Aberdeen have just got rid of manager Derek McInnes because, 39 points adrift of the league leaders, they are living in a different post code, not the same division.
Half the clubs in the league have parted company with the manager they started the season with. Steven Gerrard ’s now the longest-serving boss in the Premiership.
There was a time when we agreed the lack of a competitive league championship on this scale was what ultimately stifled the performances of our clubs in Europe.
But not this time.
Progress in Europe has inspired Rangers to an ever-improving look in their own league rather than the lack of a
challenge at home being an impediment to forward movement abroad.
Rangers are now 90 minutes from the quarter-finals of the Europa League. They’ve been as impressive on the continent as at home, undoubtedly a salute to their professionalism and to the quality of their management.
Only a fatally- pessimistic observer would rule out Rangers progressing beyond this stage of the competition.
And even wild-eyed imaginings about the final itself are an allowable form of optimistic gymnastics.
Some are now beginning to wonder if fate has in mind the payback of all paybacks for a club who have been face down in despair for longer than they care to recall.
Which brings me to the point.
I don’t believe anything would have prevented Rangers fans from gathering at George Square last weekend after the club’s first league title win for 10 years.
Gerrard could have paraded up and down Sauchiehall Street with a megaphone imploring fans not to congregate in the city centre – and it would have been a waste of time.
This was not about messaging or the lack of it.
There are some people who indulge in anti-social behaviour as a lifestyle choice – and when they do so, you should tell them they’re out of order.
Celtic’s curt statement was as accurate as it was brief as they distanced themselves from discussions with the First Minister, Police Scotland and Rangers on scenes that made a mockery of the Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives mantra.
Their involvement in last Sunday’s events began, and ended, with their inability to score a goal against Dundee United at Tannadice. They’ve enough to be going on with without getting dragged unnecessarily into a parliamentary row.
Gerrard said Rangers had done all in their power to prevent crowds violating pandemic protocols.
Having acknowledged the club was, in my opinion, powerless to prevent the numbers from gathering, I have to find that argument fanciful.
Rangers have aligned themselves with a young manager who is one of the most respected figures in British football and known far beyond these shores.
They are now in a place where they can be reinvented after a decade of despair as a 21st Century model of attainment, on and off the park.
Why not tell errant supporters where they have gone wrong in that case?
Acknowledge they crossed a line in terms of acceptable conduct with their vandalism, violence leading to arrests and violation of the rules trying to prevent the possible transmission of a deadly disease?
If the argument has gone beyond whether Celtic should give Rangers a guard of honour next Sunday and moved on to whether the game will be allowed to take place then chastisement of the unruly doesn’t seem excessive or misplaced.
Revenge is a understandable response to 10 years of subordination to another team on the park.
And there is an unwritten, but widely acknowledged, code of conduct for fans whereby there is no pleasure in success unless your rival is experiencing pain at the same time. I get it.
But wanton destruction and wilful flouting of the medical advice designed to minimise the risk of spreading a killer virus isn’t about getting back at your rivals. How can it be?
Gerrard’s appointment as manager had to be a catalyst for heightening Rangers’ profile beyond the borders of their own country.
The fans who transgressed so blatantly in public should recognise they need to up their game along with the players when it comes to the club’s reputation.
And Rangers’ chairman Douglas Park might have explored the possibility of addressing that topic rather than suggesting there was institutional bias against the club at Holyrood.
I have lived in Glasgow for 71 years. I attended my first Old Firm game 61 years ago. I think I know the West of Scotland environment and this particular rivalry as well as, if not better than, Gerrard or Nicola Sturgeon.
Life in tenement closes and housing schemes gives you a firm understanding of the ground rules relative to these two clubs and their supporters.
That education allows me to know all arguments are colour coded.
I was born into the green half of the city but I am not green enough for some so am not to be trusted.
And I am definitely not to be trusted by the blue half on cultural grounds, even while being a septuagenarian.
Like I say, I get it. But age doesn’t prevent a person from knowing right from wrong when the difference is staring him straight in the face.
