SPORTING REALITY

To say my football club has had a rough ride of it over the last few years would be an understatement. One of the craziest things about the last few years was, for me, the vitriol towards my club, coupled with a determination to completely cripple us. The reason I found this so strange (trying to be as objective as possible) was because this was so clearly a case of other clubs seeking to cut off their nose to spite their face.

 

Rangers and Celtic are two of the biggest clubs in the world. Whether you like them or not, they dwarf the other clubs in the league. They have had more success than the others and bring more fans with them than any of the other clubs. More fans means more money, and money is something many of the other clubs simply do not have. The way the Dundee United chairman brought out statistics and charts to show how attendances would increase year-on-year was utterly risible. I firmly believe the desire to punish Rangers has hugely contributed to lack of quality in the national side over recent years.

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Despite domestic form being fairly abysmal in the new year, the quality of performances in Europe should be considered a great source of success. I believe we need a few tougher players to battle against some of the big target men we are facing week in, week out. Far too often, we are losing both the first and the second balls and simply not clearing our lines. At the other end of the park, we need to be far more clinical than we have been. Finally, we need the players to have the mentality that nothing other than a good win is an acceptable outcome of just about every domestic game.