TO THE RANGERS YOUTH PLAYERS, COACHES & STAFF - SOME SALT TO RUB INTO YOUR WOUNDS

By Ben Palmer

When Kenny Miller rejoined Rangers for a third time, it wasn't met with the typical narrative fans have displayed when discussing the Glasgow side in the past few years.

For a Rangers fan, was it met with anger? Perhaps. Miller has already two bites at the Rangers cherry, and at 34 his soon to be false teeth may not manage it. Why should he deserve another?

For a Celtic fan, not them all I must state, was it met with the laughter and mockery that they have emitted when discussing their Glasgow rivals in recent years? Again, perhaps. McCoist re-signing an old buddy who was is surely now on his last legs; I can understand why that may be met with a giggle.

For Scottish football observers it may have been met with the typical sigh that comes with every piece of news from Edmiston Drive. It's not one of relief though, it's one of disbelief and frustration. Will the Rangers saga ever end?

These perceptions of Kenny Miller's third signing for the Gers may well be true. But a common denominator amongst all reactions to the signing was sheer confusion.

When Miller scribbled his signature for a third time in the Ibrox boardroom, a former Rangers youth player, Charlie Telfer, was doing the same thing up at Tannadice.

Acknowledged widely as a talent, a beacon of hope for the talent which Rangers may need in just a year’s time to challenge in the Scottish Premiership, is gone, instead trying to further his career a division above.

This theme of confusion is a direct derivative of Ally McCoist's transfer dealings. Why on Earth was a young talent going out, when one on his last legs was coming in?

Kris Boyd's signing this week looks set to revive this confusion. Boyd, the season after one of his most impressive – endeavour and activity wise – is taking a step down to once again pull on the Royal Blue.

Although his striking prowess will result in an abundance of goals in the second tier of Scottish football, the signing beggars belief if anything.

At 30, Rangers have signed a No.9 on his dénouement, his final years are imminent. McCoist, however, must know what he is doing having deemed 25 year old Andy Little surplus to plans.

Having averaged a goal every two games at Rangers since his début back in 2009, McCoist saw no place for Little in his plans to get Rangers over their final hurdle since liquidation – on the pitch at least – and back into the Premiership.

When Rangers begin their pre-season at Highland League side Buckie Thistle's Victoria Park next Thursday evening, not only will it be a confusing sight to see a team building for the future consisting of a strike-force with a combined age of 64, but it will be a hard sight on those who are indeed building for the future.

Once Rangers went under, it was a chance for the youngsters to break into the side, Fraser Aird made that jump, but the lack of company is unsettling. The work of the Rangers youth coaches not being utilised at the end of the natural conveyor belt: an Ibrox in the Scottish Premiership. 

McCoist letting Callum Telfer and Andy Little jump ship created a graze, Kenny Miller's signing burst open the wound, Kris Boyd is pouring the salt.

Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller may well score dozens between them this year, but with retirement on the scope, and the younger promising generation disappearing, McCoist's transfer dealings may not be as shiny as first hoped.

NO GREY AREAS MAKES NEW SIGNING

NO GREY AREAS has made an exciting new signing...17-year-old freelance sports journalist Ben Palmer.

Ben’s Blog will be a regular feature and is the young voice of the website.

So, who is Ben Palmer?

Brought up in Buckie, Morayshire, Ben began covering sports from as wide a geographical area as Wick to Wigtown – before he was the legal age to drive.

A keen golfer, Ben hopes to one day cover both golf and football on a regular basis, but says his sports mind is not as narrow as may seem. His passion is greater for writing on sports of all varieties, rather than just watching his two preferred.

He started sports writing at the tender age of 13 – covering the Highland League – but has continued to climb the metaphorical ladder and has written for an array of Scottish national newspapers, including The Press & Journal, Sunday Mail and The Times.

So far in his career he has won “The Herald and Daily What News Schools Journalist of the Year 2012” and was also selected as part of the Future News event in Glasgow, 2014. This event rounded up 100 young journalists from across the Commonwealth and taught the fundamentals required in modern day journalism.

Having only just completed his Secondary education at Buckie High School – at which he was Head Boy in his final year – Ben is about embark on a four year University course before, hopefully, sculpting a career writing the back pages of newspapers.

Meantime, don’t miss his weekly blog, starting with his frank assessment of the state of Scottish football at the top level.

BY BEN PALMER

LA LIGA  and the Barclay's Premier League. Arguably the two top leagues in world football quality wise; certainly from an economic dynamic.

Questions have been raised on the ethics in either of these leagues recently. Man City look set to be fined 60 Million Euros for breaching the Financial Fair Play regulations, whereas Spain's crippling problems with racism continue to increase.

Beneath the blurred surroundings in which these leagues are played though, is still the fundamental trait mandatory for the top football leagues in the world: excitement.

Atlético Madrid won their first league title since 1996 – on the last day of the season in a winner takes all affair with Barcelona – and Manchester City won the English edition in similar circumstances, defeating West Ham. Not quite in the Hollywood style climax La Liga enjoyed, but a fitting finale nonetheless.

Essentially, these two leagues continue to flourish, continue to captivate and ooze excitement year after year. The spectators of each are lavished with sheer quality continuously.

In Scotland, however, we are being told that we have just experienced the most exciting season in years. That seemingly positive comment is merely a sad indictment of our nation’s number one sport.

The game, according to some, is blossoming, all because neither Celtic nor Rangers partook in a cup final.

Sure, it's great that we've been treated to St Johnstone winning the Scottish Cup and Aberdeen the League Cup - two formidable tasks - but the assessment that this is portraying this past season of Scottish football as being exciting is laughable.

The début Scottish Premiership season was a sham. Celtic being engraved as champions could have been done last summer, and Hearts were always condemned to relegation having to toil through a season with a bunch of teenagers and a 15 point deduction.

The main trophy in Scottish football never even had realistic potential to conceive excitement. The two most important positions in the league table had been determined before the leaves had started to drift off the trees; the period in the season where a team’s potential should become recognised.

Whilst Dundee United displayed sprinklings of their now recognised youthful zest, it didn't really matter at all in the context of the league – they would never win it.

Their developing of young Scottish talent did plant a seed of hope for the game as a whole, but their parabola of a second half of a season – rounding off with a Scottish Cup final defeat - means that we must wait longer to see it produce the desired results.

Admittedly there was tension, excitement for a pessimist, at the bottom end of the league. Hibs downfall and tussle with Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock for the relegation play-off place grabbed attention.

But does that mean a season of Scottish football has been exciting because one of the biggest clubs in the country has sunk in a manner of Titanic proportions? Absolutely not.

Teams tussling for the league title is exciting; teams having a hope of escaping relegation is exciting; our clubs battling it out in Europe is exciting - Hibs having a bunch of incompetent footballers does not constitute exciting.

With this, I am not saying Scottish football is in an inescapable cul-de-sac. It is the proclaiming of this past season as the most exciting in years that I must refute.

Scottish football has perhaps enjoyed a better year; Aberdeen fans being thrown back to the 80's was a fun period, and Motherwell's steadiness is reassuring, but we must let the game reach its peak before we jump on our stallion and shout from the roof tops.

Will we remember the dogged battle Hibs have fought in 10 years time? Probably not. Will we remember La Liga's most thrilling conclusion in a decade? Absolutely.

Let's just settle ourselves down and leave the superlatives to the games that deserve it. With the progression we are currently making, it may not be long before we merit it ourselves.

BACK STABBING IS MAKING IT A DIRTY GAME

BY JIM BLACK

FOOTBALL has become an increasingly dirty game - and I am not talking about the physical nature of the sport.

Back-stabbing and blatant wheeling and dealing by individuals out to make a quick buck at the expense of those who support the once great game has turned football into a shadowy, grainy image of its former self.

But even by the current standards of duplicity and dirty tricks, recent distasteful events have cast another dark shadow over Scottish football.

My initial instinct was to say hell mend Hearts for the club’s treatment of its former manager, Gary Locke, his backroom staff, and several players.

Likewise, St Mirren, for their treatment of Danny Lennon, and Hibs chairman Rod Petrie, for immediately distancing himself from the latest Easter Road crisis.

Rangers Football Club, meanwhile, continues to be run in a manner that beggars belief and suggests that the inmates have indeed taken over the running of the asylum!

One is tempted to hope that good fortune deserts those responsible for discarding Locke and Lennon, Petrie, for his cowardly refusal to stand up and be counted, and Rangers’ chief executive Graham Wallace and an incompetent bunch of directors - some of whom are patently unfit to hold the role – for their continued bungling.

But to do so would be disrespectful and unfeeling towards the thousands of loyal fans who follow the fortunes of the aforementioned clubs at considerable expense.

After the Hearts fans had shown a loyalty above and beyond the call of duty to keep the club alive, they were rewarded with renewed hope of a much brighter future under Ann Budge, the new owner with a successful business background.

Their optimism was sadly misplaced. Budge has shown herself to be a “Hearts-breaker” rather than a visionary.

The Budge revolution has begun with the axing of loyal staff, most notably Locke, a Jambo through and through, and man who did a quite remarkable job in largely impossible circumstances.

Hearts were never going to survive in the Premiership on the back of a 15 point deduction and a signing ban. That they managed to stave off relegation for as long as they did was largely down to Locke and his assistant Billy Brown.

They also departed Tynecastle having left behind a rich legacy of young players who, I believed, would have made Hearts a good bet to be promotion contenders next season.

Robbie Neilson has replaced Locke as first team coach. Craig Levein has been appointed to the role of director of football.

Remember Levein? He is a former Hearts footballer who achieved some success as a player, but precious little as a manager, including a disastrous and largely hugely embarrassing spell as Scotland coach.

Budge attempted to explain her betrayal of Locke and the others in a waffling statement that added insult to injury.

Bottom line is the 66-year-old so-called Queen of Hearts has behaved in a manner little better than that of a cut-throat.

She is guilty of a huge misjudgement. She emerged from her first day in charge without a shred of credit and already thousands of Hearts fans are questioning the future under the new Iron Lady.

Will she eventually hand over control, as promised? Don’t bet on it. She appears to already have been caught out in a lie when she claimed she had not spoken with Levein prior to her takeover.

But Budge will do well to remember that the majority of Hearts fans regard Locke as one of their own and will be quick to round on her if the expected renaissance fails to happen.

Personally, I would not be at all surprised if Hearts is plunged into a new crisis a year from now although I hope, for the fans’ sake, I am wrong.

Officially, St Mirren did not sack Danny Lennon they simply did not renew his contract. It was Lennon’s reward for winning the League Cup and keeping the club in the Premiership.

What more can a provincial club with limited resources expect? I know the chairman Stewart Gilmour reasonably well. Indeed, I have socialised with him and find him pleasant company. But Stewart is in danger of taking up residence in La-La Land if he imagines that his beloved Saints can do very much better under the stewardship of a different manager.

Petrie, meanwhile, is Scottish football’s Teflon Don. Having launched a verbal assault on his manager, Terry Butcher and the Hibs players for the abject failure to avoid the SPFL play-off, he conveniently forgets that he is the man who appoints and then sacks managers at a rate that is almost as dizzying as a roundabout.

So, Hibs current plight has nothing do with Petrie, then?

And, finally, Rangers – that once great club situated on Glasgow’s south-side.

There was a glorious opportunity to begin again post-David Murray and rebuild a strong foundation. Instead, those who have followed have dangerously weakened the existing one.

The general consensus is that it will take Rangers a decade to reassert themselves as a power in Scottish football, capable of challenging Celtic.

From where I’m sitting, under the present regime, that is an extremely optimistic time-scale!

THE END IS NIGH FOR LENNON, BUT GRIFFITHS SAFE FOR NOW

By Andy Ritchie

THEY are taking bets on Leigh Griffiths being booted out by Celtic, but the smarter money is on a much bigger name being gone before the start of next season.

I’m referring to the most important man at the club, the manager, Neil Lennon.

If Lennon has sense, and he’s got plenty as far as I can judge, he’ll have reached the conclusion some time ago that he has very likely achieved just about as much as he can at Celtic Park and that it’s time for a fresh challenge.

In fact, Lennon may even be regretting not having made a move a year ago when his stock was trading higher following the team’s Champions League successes.

There hasn’t been a queue of club chairmen from England battering down the doors to entice Scottish managers south in recent years, which is a sad indictment of what they think about the general state of our game, and Lennon is clearly aware that he will have to sell himself to an extent.

So it didn’t surprise me to see him appear on Match if the Day 11 the other week, when he gave a polished performance talking purely about the playing side rather than about all  the other aspects that come with being an Old Firm manager.

He managed to sound astute and appeared more at ease discussing tactics, formations and playing styles, so if Lennon’s ploy was to try and advance his case, it worked a treat.

The timing was spot on and those chairmen and owners contemplating managerial change over the course of the next few weeks cannot help but have been impressed at the way Lennon came over.

I imagine there is going to be a bit of movement in the Premiership before the World Cup kicks-off.

The dogs in the street are already barking out that there has been at least a degree of contact between Norwich and Lennon, but the Canaries won’t be the only club in the market for a new manager.

Newcastle cannot possibly be happy with Alan Pardew after everything that has gone off on Tyneside and all is clearly far from well in the Aston Villa camp.

Not only have you got the situation with two members of the senior coaching staff under investigation for alleged bullying, results under Paul Lambert haven’t been great either.

The most attractive option is a Premiership club where Lennon’s personal terms would be far more lucrative than if he was managing a Championship side, so much may depend on which teams are relegated.

But I believe that whatever is eventually on offer to him, Lennon has reached the stage where he feels he’s done enough at Celtic Park and that the grass is greener on the other side.

And I’m prepared to stick my neck out and predict that Neil Lennon will no longer be the Celtic manager come August.
But I believe Griffiths will still be with my old club when Celtic begin their defence of the SPFL title.

Contrary to the apparently widely held belief that Griffiths is facing the axe, I don’t think he is even close to being sacked - at least for the time being.

Yes, Griffiths is an idiot. No, chanting racist abuse is not acceptable.

But he is clearly not the sharpest cookie. He also appears easily led when drink is involved.

But a Hibee having a pop at the Jambos and vice-versa is nothing new, and calling someone a refugee hardly constitutes a hanging offence.

I’ve had 50,000 calling me a lazy, fat bastard, so does that mean if I am able to identify the guilt I am free to sue them? I’ll better put in a call to Donald Findlay, just in case.

The SFA has done its best to inflate the situation while Celtic have thrown a fire blanket over what was a drink-fuelled outburst deserving of a heavy slap on the wrist, a club fine, and a warning to Griffiths as to his future conduct.

But if there is a next time that might turn out to be a very different matter as he would be judged to have thumbed his nose at those who are trying to help save him from himself.

Others, players and managers, have committed worse acts and escaped relatively unscathed, but the SFA looks to have turned the Griffiths affair into something of a crusade.

They should have left it up to his club to deal with Griffiths and Celtic, in turn, should order him to find suitable accommodation in the west away from the temptations of life in the capital and the influence of his mates.

If Griffiths can screw the nut, he’s good enough at domestic level to score 25 goals a season. But the real testing ground is Europe and whether he’s good enough to do it at the next level.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t one of those surprised by St Johnstone’s achievement in reaching their first ever Scottish Cup final.

I had a sneaking feeling beforehand that they would dump the Dons due to Aberdeen’s a lack of youth and energy in the middle of the park.

St Johnstone is a team who keep snapping away at the opposition and in Steve May they have some who is always liable to score.

Barry Robson and Willo Flood were running on empty after an hour and as soon as Saints equalised there was only one team going to win, in my mind.

It’s good that we have two teams from the Tayside region in the final for a change and it should turn out to be a decent enough spectacle.

Dundee United beating Rangers in the other semi-final was no surprise either. Even playing at only 50 per cent capacity, United were able to turn over the opposition with relative ease.

And I am sure that didn’t come as a shock to anyone who had watched Rangers the week before in the Ramsdens Cup final.

The Green Brigade may have hastened Neil Lennon’s departure from Celtic Park.

BY ANDY RITCHIE

CELTIC’S 6-1 defeat by Barcelona was an embarrassment and it may also turn out to be the moment when Neil Lennon decided that it’s time to move on.

Lennon’s stock was never higher than it was 12 months ago when Celtic progressed through to the last 16 of the Champions League.

That would have been the ideal time for him to have actively sought a job in the Premiership and I don’t know whether he chose to remain at Celtic or there were no managerial offers forthcoming.

But one thing’s for sure, his stock is not nearly so high a year on. Celtic’s results in Europe have been disappointing to say the least and that will have impacted on Lennon’s chances of landing a job in England.

It used to be that simply being manager of Celtic and Rangers was sufficient to guarantee you a job down south if you made it known you wanted one. Not anymore.

But there’s nothing to keep him at Celtic that I can see. He punched well above his weight last season as far as Europe was concerned but this campaign has been a huge let down not even qualifying for the Europa League.

And if he has any sense – and I believe he does – he will seek pastures new over the coming months.

It’s clear that the sort of money required to achieve a level of success in Europe isn’t going to be forthcoming from Peter Lawwell and Lennon understands that he needs a different type of player for Europe, and they cost big bucks.

He lost three players at the end of last season and tried to replace them with something like seven others who proved to be less than effective in the Champions League and maybe even the SPFL as well.

So, I think he’ll be saying to himself that he has probably gone as far as he can at Celtic Park and as the situation stands in Scottish football, the Premiership is a bigger deal, even at the clubs lower down.

If you have genuine ambition you must want to test yourself by flexing your muscles in the Premiership, and that applies to managers as well as players.

I suspect the Norwich job will become available soon although I hear that Malky Mackay is in line to take over there, and, if so, there will be a vacancy at Cardiff, while there may also be an eventual opening at West Ham.

It’s getting to that time of year when chairmen and owners start becoming increasingly twitchy, as we saw in the case of Fulham, so there will definitely be opportunities.

It all depends on how much Lennon wants to test himself at Premiership level. If, as I suspect, he does, then he’ll let it be known in the right circles.

Meanwhile, the so-called Green Brigade isn’t doing Celtic, or Scottish football for that matter, any favours.

They have caused mayhem in recent weeks and while they are clearly a minority of the support, there is a sizeable enough number to cause concern and they appear to be gathering momentum.

I have no idea exactly what their agenda is or what they are trying to achieve. Maybe if they declared their aims something could be done to tackle the problem before it gets completely out of hand.

The situation can’t be allowed to continue and if their aim is just purely vandalism then the sooner they are kicked out of football the better.

At £55 an hour for each constable, the SPFL clubs have been examining ways of reducing policing costs for some time now and selective matches have been police-free within the stadium.

By that I mean the stewards have carried out policing duties and taken on responsibility for ejecting unruly spectators and handing them over to officers stationed outside the ground.

I was the SPL delegate at the first ever police-free match, a 2-2 draw between Motherwell and Hibs at Fir Park several years ago, and the hope by now was that the majority of fixtures would be policed by stewards only.

But events at Fir Park have opened a fresh can of worms with the throwing of flares and the ripping out of seats. in addition to various other health and safety issues.

The bampots responsible have effectively set the whole policing issue back years at a time when the clubs are desperately trying to reduce their outgoings.

After all, with all due respect, you are not going to get stewards earning a fifth of what police officers receive risking serious injury trying to deal with the thugs who are hell bent on causing maximum damage and disruption to the game they profess to be fans of.

The Green Brigade may also have hastened Neil Lennon’s departure from Celtic Park.