Davie Weir has admitted that #goingfor55 was never reality and that the gap between Celtic and Sevco isn’t getting any closer.
Three years ago Mark Warburton promised a revolution with the former Ibrox defender by his side after Sevco had lost out to Motherwell in the Premiership play-off.
For 10 months the plan went like a dream culminating in a penalty shoot out win over Celtic in the Scottish Cup.
Such was the obsession at Ibrox that losing the cup final to Hibs barely dampened delusions that the new club was poised to win the SPFL title at the first time of asking to sort out some of their many enemies.
Celtic responded by signing Moussa Dembele, Scott Sinclair and Kolo Toure while big spending Warbo brought in stars from across the globe in Joey Barton, Pip Senderos, Nick Kranjcar, Joey Garner and Jordan Rossiter.
The laughable #goingfor55 campaign was bought into by the gullibles but after being hammered 5-1 by Celtic Warbo and Weir would have been as well heading back to England with their credibility destroyed.
Speaking to Simon Ferry Weir admitted: “We were going into a new season and the expectations all of a sudden were ‘We’re going for 55, we’re going to win the league’.
“We had to recruit; we had to improve the squad. We had a young squad that actually needed help to even be competitive in that league.
“So we brought in a few players, it didn’t quite work out. Obviously Joey (Barton), you know. We signed Joey, he was the best Championship midfielder that season. It didn’t work out at Rangers for whatever reason.
“We signed Jordan Rossiter who was, in my mind, the best young English midfielder at that age. He got injured, that didn’t quite work out. We signed Niko Kranjcar who got injured as well.
“So it just seemed like things didn’t quite work out for in terms of how quickly people expected us to be where they felt they needed us to be.
“The expectations were really high and we didn’t meet those expectations quickly enough for a lot of people.
“You always think you can win the league but if you look at it objectively what right have Rangers coming back in to the Premiership having not been there for five years with, no disrespect to the lads we had in the squad, how can that team be expected to win the league?
“And Celtic had improved. They realised that we had made some good signings by everybody’s accounts account at the time and Celtic reacted to that by bringing in a top class manager and some top class players.
“They reacted to the sort of challenge we brought to them so the gap had become even bigger so we had to try bridge that gap and it was really difficult.
“With hindsight, it was never going to be achievable in that first season and as its shown now there’s still a gap there and I’m not sure it’s closed even now.”
