Manager of the Year: Terry Butcher

Kenny Shiels will feel aggrieved at losing out, maybe with good reason, but Terry Butcher’s feats at Inverness Caledonian Thistle have been immense.

To go into the closing days of 2012 sitting second in the SPL table is some achievement by Butcher at such a small – though thoroughly admirable and likeable – club.

Summer upon summer Butcher loses players and then trawls the lesser British leagues for unknowns – and time and again he pulls it off.

I was struck by the bluntness of this summary, given the progress I believed had been made across the rutted Old Firm terrain in recent years.

Peace, love and understanding I am not proclaiming. But more and more Rangers and Celtic fans, it seems to me, lead more rounded and integrated lives today, in which they share their love of football and their rivalry as friends or work colleagues.

There will be next to no Rangers supporters travelling to Tannadice for the Scottish Cup fifth round clash with Dundee United in February.

What a saga this has become of bitterness, aggro and not the faintest whiff of vengeance.

A snapshot of Rangers supporters’ views over the past 24 hours had revealed quite a huff and a disdain over all things Dundee United.

I think these trust funds look morally pretty dubious, and I say this in the full knowledge that the First Tier Tribunal has just found in favour of Rangers and the Murray Group.

Indeed, I’ve called EBTs “a form of cheating” and, while the context of that comment was specific, I can’t take the remark back.

EBTS benefited (in the case of Rangers) both the club and their employees, and were to the severe detriment of the Revenue.

Smith will blanch at the comparison, but you sometimes think he is to Rangers fans today what Winston Churchill was to Britons 70 years ago, in terms of inspiration and trust.

For Green, Smith’s return to Ibrox is a godsend. This Yorkshireman, of no previous Rangers affiliation and merely at the club to make money (and there’s no sin in it), has quite astoundingly turned around his own standing at the club, first by getting Ally McCoist to give his public backing, and now having Smith’s assent as well.

I’ve been there, had the treatment, received such threats myself. It was all highly familiar, even if I've never written publicly about it until now.

One of Channel 4’s interviewees was Gary Allan, the Scottish QC, who said that, after his involvement with an SFA panel which punished Rangers for bringing the game into disrepute, Strathclyde Police had summoned him to an urgent meeting due to threats being made against him.

Scotland’s 2-0 defeat to Belgium in the World Cup qualifier in Brussels caused no startling jolt to the Scottish psyche. Instead, it only confirmed that Levein, either through bad luck or poor judgement, has been an unsuccessful international coach.

Levein in all likelihood will be relieved of his post, perhaps after a period of dithering, and the SFA will attempt to line up yet another luckless patsy to try their hand at the task.

Scores of ‘favourite sons’ have been binned down the years, from Billy McNeill at Celtic, to Willie Miller at Aberdeen, to Paul Sturrock at Dundee United. Even the god-like Jock Wallace was previously turfed out of Rangers.

In football, having a ‘legendary status’ brings lots of perks, but job-security cannot be quoted among them.

McCoist is the ultimate Rangers legend. He is adored by the club’s support, is Rangers’ all-time leading goalscorer, and has been a sheet-anchor off the field in this summer of Ibrox upheaval.