One of the many soundbites that Dave King dished out during five years of failure at Ibrox was a claim that Celtic’s business model was actually a House of Cards waiting to be toppled.
At the end of the 2017/18 season morale at Ibrox was at rock bottom. Pedro Caixinha had flopped badly, Derek McInnes found a bargepole while Graeme Murty was a broken man after watching his dad’s team win 5-0 to clinch the title. Jimmy Nichol stepped into the hot seat before Steven Gerrard arrived.
References to Celtic sustained King before and during his time at Ibrox, fear of nine or ten in a row could be diluted knowing that a guid Rainjrs man was in charge at Ibrox.
Rallying the troops after appointing Gerrard, in May 2018 King told the Daily Record:
We appoint a manager who can win games, with more resources, and we take one league away from Celtic. We only need one league. We don’t need two or three. We need one. Once we take one away, it’s a pack of cards.
Celtic’s costs structure is more like we were 10 years ago. We needed Champions League football and if we went into the Europa League we were in trouble because the cost structure was so high. Take that away for one season and it will change the numbers in the Celtic side very, very quickly.
They have the comfort levels we once had of knowing we were going to get Champions League money. We have to take that away from them and hopefully we have started that process on Friday.
The question is, that with Celtic’s resources, does it put you beyond them forever? The answer is clearly no.
We have seen the cycle. I was with Rangers when we thought Celtic would never catch up – never in a hundred years. Dick Advocaat said they would never, ever catch up. I think it lasted 17 minutes of the next game we played against them (Celtic’s 6-2 win in August 2000.)
They caught up with us 17 minutes into the next game and then went past us because Martin O’Neill came in and figured out a different way to do it.
You need the right management structure to do it. We have now gone very, very strong in the management squad.
That very, very strong squad lost out in all three domestic competitions last season. This term they have lost to Celtic in the League Cup and Hearts in the Scottish Cup.
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Since enjoying a winter break in Dubai the gap at the top of the SPFL table has stretched from 2 to 13 points with Celtic having eight matches left to play.
The House of Cards has survived two seasons without Champions League football, with King bailing out on Friday night the House of Cards may just be on the other side of the city.
