Former Rangers (IL) skipper Ally Dawson has warned Ibrox fans that they are in for a long wait to complete the obsession of overtaking Celtic.
The new message coming out of Ibrox is in stark contrast to the #goingfor55 campaign at the start of the season when Joey Barton and Nico Kranjcar were about to lead the club to glory following last season’s Scottish Cup semi-final win over the hoops.
January’s cold reality shows a gap of 19 points to the Champions elect with Mark Warburton’s summer spending spree making no difference to the side but further draining the club’s limited resources.
Dawson knows about bleak times at Ibrox from captaining the club in the early eighties when the cup competitions provided the only chance of success as Celtic, Aberdeen and Dundee United competed for the title.
Crowds of 12,000 were the norm in those days until Graeme Souness brought in the trophies and sent the overdraft off the radar as the club set off on the route to liquidation.
2017 looks as bleak as 2012 for the Ibrox fans but amid the gloom Dawson believes that the good times will return at some undefined future date.
“Rangers will get there,” he reassured readers of the Evening Times. “When it does come it will be joyous and the fans will appreciate it far more but there is still a long way to go.
“I stayed at Rangers for another year after Souness took over and a better quality of player came in. It was great to be playing with really good players.
“The club went from strength to strength but they can’t afford to go back down that route and hopefully they won’t go down that route. Doing that was the cause of all the problems in the first place.
“I can understand the fans’ frustration. Rangers should be spending more money and have better players given the size of club they are but they have to resist the temptation to spend a lot of money and try to fix things right away.
“They might not bring the right players in, they might spend a lot of money and still not enjoy the success they want to.”
Dawson added: “What they are doing, building slowly, is far better in the long run. It will mean the club is on far more solid foundations. I know that is difficult for some fans to accept, but they can’t just throw millions of pounds into it.
“I actually think they aren’t a million miles away from it. I think it only needs two or three players to come in and click.
“They are a good bit behind Celtic, but they aren’t a good bit behind the rest of Scottish football. They have something to build on.”
Dawson is unlikely to be used in the campaign to sell 2017/18 season tickets.
CLICK HERE for five bhoys that must impress in Dubai
CLICK HERE for Dembele’s message to racists
CLICK HERE for Celtic’s first January departure.
