Plenty of us are revelling in their current woes and, if we are being honest, loving every second of it. But beneath all the memes and the laughing at their latest disaster, I think there has to be a bit of caution.
Strip the emotion away for a minute and ask a simple question: what exactly have Rangers done this season that’s actually contributed to their implosion? The painful answer is pretty clear. Not a thing.
Enjoying their pain, but where’s our part in it?
We couldn’t beat them at Ibrox. They knocked us out of the cup. They are still six points clear of us in the league. That’s the reality, no matter how much we enjoy seeing them suffer elsewhere.
A Celtic-supporting mate messaged our group chat last night about the euphoria among Rangers fans after their Hampden humiliation. What he said stung a bit, but it was hard to argue with. He basically said we have fallen so far that we now show a small-team mentality, buzzing off other clubs doing to them what we wish we could do ourselves, just so we can claim a bit of moral victory.
And the more you think about it, the more it lands. He is not wrong, is he?
The state we are in as a club
That is the most depressing part. We are in such a poor state as a team that we still cannot properly lay a glove on them when it matters. Instead, we end up relying on other sides to do the damage while we sit on the sidelines celebrating like we played a part.
It speaks to where our standards have dropped. Rangers should be the ones dishing out the big results, setting the tempo in the league, and putting the pressure on them directly. Instead, we cling to any sign of their pain, even when we have contributed the square root of nothing to create it.
Now, to be clear, that will not stop me enjoying their bad days. I will still laugh at the entitled attitude of a support that cannot handle seeing their team implode a bit. That part of the rivalry will never disappear, and nor should it.
Time to raise standards, not just laughs
But there is a harsh truth underneath the banter. Our own bar has sunk so low that any chance to celebrate their hurt feels like a win, even when it is not ours. That is not what Rangers should be about.
By all means, enjoy their misery. Most of us will. Yet sooner or later, the conversation has to turn back to us. Until we are the ones handing out the real blows on the park, all this gloating is just noise, masking the fact that we have an awful lot of work still to do.
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