HAVING spent so many years as a master of timing and anticipation Ally McCoist has a better chance than most of recognising if he has passed the point of no return as the manager of Rangers.
They say every politician's career ends in failure and the same might be said of McCoist in management. This isn't going to end with him making Rangers the champions of Scotland.
None of the likeliest scenarios offer the prospect of him being carried shoulder high out of Rangers by adoring supporters. If Rangers cough up many more performances like last Monday's awful capitulation against Hibs, and lose much more ground in the SPFL Championship, he will given the tap on the shoulder and dismissed by Graham Wallace, Sandy Easdale or whoever else around Scotland's most dysfunctional club has the nerve to put his head above the parapet.
If Rangers are promoted as champions or via the play-offs as runners-up McCoist's reign will of course be extended, but it stretches the imagination to see anything other than death by a thousand cuts when they're in the top flight. Rangers' board and their supporters have been broadly prepared to tolerate the mediocrity of their football in the lower leagues because at least the grinding slog has inched them forwards. McCoist may even take Rangers to being "the best of the rest" by the end of next season . . . but then what? When they stall, when they hit the glass ceiling behind Celtic - whether Celtic are managed by Ronny Deila or someone else their financial strength will be irresistible - scrutiny of McCoist will intensify.
The possibility of a new Ibrox regime offers him no reprieve, or at least not the new regime which seems to be looming on the club's horizon. Dave King is a pal and would keep him. But it's not King's tanks that are being parked on the Ibrox lawns, to use that chilling phrase so often associated with Mike Ashley's predatory modus operandi when he's buying businesses or football clubs. When Ashley takes over he gets his own men in. Dennis Wise for Rangers? Joe Kinnear? Alan Pardew? All bets would be off, but McCoist would be a goner.
Rangers can't last under an ownership model which lurches from one emergency begging bowl to the next. If some within the Ibrox board had their way McCoist would have been shown the door long ago. Would Wallace and the Easdales have the remotest clue who would do a good job as Rangers manager?
Would any capable and credible manager take the job given the poisonous madhouse the club has been for three years? For the time being the points are redundant because Rangers' finances are such a mess that they cannot easily afford to pay off McCoist and his backroom team. McCoist was right on Friday, his position isn't "bombproof", but the cost of getting rid of him has been prohibitive even for a regime which has scattered compensation cheques like confetti.
Besides, McCoist still holds far more influence over the supporters than the directors themselves do. If McCoist asks the punters to buy tickets or season-tickets they will at least listen to him. He has his uses.
Plenty of Rangers fans long for the day when their relationship with McCoist can be uncomplicated again. The corrosion of the way they think about him has pained them, as it always does when a hero's halo slips. They want to think of McCoist the irrepressible goalscorer, McCoist the hammer of Celtic, McCoist the icon. That unqualified adulation is impossible when he's the guy presiding over a third consecutive season peppered with on-field embarrassments. Rangers predictably took care of Livingston on Saturday and no-one should be surprised if they now go on a run of wins. And then another humbling result will come along and the howls will rise up around McCoist again.
He has openly said that the time will come when he's had enough. The job has taken its toll, he said. Everyone has a "cut-off point", he said. Would it be a surprise if he was looking at next summer as the time to leave on his own terms?
If he does steer Rangers to a third straight promotion they would be in the Premiership. It would be a natural punctuation mark in what they call "the journey".
And maybe McCoist might decide it is a natural punctuation mark in his own journey too. But lose further ground in the Championship and the decision will be taken for him.
AND ANOTHER THING . . .
Two thoughts crossed the mind as a handful of us listened to Ronny Deila deliver his famous sermon on chips the other day. Firstly, it was difficult to disagree with a single point he made about the athletic superiority of players at the very highest level. Secondly, this analysis was coming from a man whose team had laboured to beat struggling St Mirren four days earlier.
Deila has to get his priorities right, and number one is winning matches. Dietary changes take weeks, months even, to deliver any discernible improvement. More performances and results like yesterday's against Hamilton and changing the menu will have an entirely different meaning around Parkhead. Celtic can say all they like about Deila being here for the long term, and that the club will not be influenced by short-term struggles. Tell that to Davie Moyes, of whom the same was said by Manchester United.
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