Rangers manager Derek McInnes faces a Doomsday scenario this week. If Celtic qualify for the Champions League proper on Tuesday and Rangers fail to make it into the Conference League on Thursday, the manager's approval rating goes subterranean.
Celtic hold a three-goal lead over Austrians LASK, but if that is no guarantee of European progress, Rangers' one-goal lead over Jablonec, from the Czech Republic, stands up to even less scrutiny. The Czechs are the very definition of limited ability, which would make matters even worse should they eliminate Rangers from the third tier of European football.
Empty seats tell the story
The irony is that Ibrox fans who would howl if that happened clearly believe the Conference League to be beneath their club's dignity at the same time. Empty seats at Ibrox tell the full story.
When Giovanni van Bronckhorst was taking Rangers on the Road to Seville, ultimately losing the Europa League Final to Eintracht Frankfurt on penalties, Thursday nights at Ibrox were credited with being the moment when Rangers, and their fans, came alive with a synergy opposition teams found to be insurmountable.
Last Thursday, a significant percentage of the home support, a third on the basis of 16,000 unoccupied seats, gave the game a miss. Those who did turn up gave their team the now customary roasting at half-time before going off into the night muttering under their breath about various unfathomable decisions relative to team selection, substitutions and a general lack of entertainment value.
Scottish dimension questioned
Radio pundit Andy Halliday described Rangers as being for most of the game "dreadful" and a "hard watch," which was taken as confirmation McInnes' side still have work to do to avoid the ultimate embarrassment on the continent. It is, as the most famous former Rangers player to come from Govan once said, "squeaky bum time".
There was, incidentally, only one Scot in Rangers' starting XI on Thursday – defender James Penrice, and he's a loanee. The question is whether there was supposed to be a shift towards returning the club to a Scottish dimension.
Rangers' game in the Czech Republic will be followed, three days later, by a trip to Aberdeen in the Premiership. Given that Celtic have a five-point lead over their greatest rivals after only two matches, and will also play 24 hours before McInnes' side, Pittodrie could offer another test of Rangers' mentality.
Learning curve ahead
The challenge is to explain to players like Tochi Chukwuani or Olwethu Makhanya about decades of grievance leading to years of enmity between the clubs, and an atmosphere between rival fans that starts with detestation then gets worse. Does a team full of players not from Scotland "get it" sufficiently well to be in a suitably combative frame of mind?
As the manager said after the win over Jablonec: "I can't hold people's hands for 90 minutes. They have to take a bit of ownership."
Away games tell home truths and the extent to which McInnes' players are up for the fight at home and in Europe will be determined over a 72-hour period this week. Being denied European earnings, even at the lowest end of the scale, is not on for Rangers while they rack up copious incoming transfers at considerable cost and plan to spend even more extravagant sums before the summer transfer window closes. It's going to be a steep learning curve for Derek in coming days as part of his ongoing negotiation of an obstacle course.
