‘Our club has a huge rot inside at all levels’ ‘Crumbled like the first team’ ‘the usual depression’ Glasgow Cup despair for Ibrox fans

In over a decade of The Banter Years this season looks like being hard to beat.

There have been plenty of painful seasons for bears to endure but very few where hopes were so high.

Reaching the Europa League Final 12 months ago allowed Ibrox fans to some extent to blank out Celtic’s title success and the transformation carried out by Ange Postecoglou.

In the summer Giovanni van Bronckhorst was viewed as an upgrade on Steven Gerrard with £15m spent on bringing in talents like Ridvan Yilmaz, Ben Davies, Antonio Colak and Rabbi Matondo.

For reassurance only Mark Wilson of the pundits on Radio Clyde tipped against the league title going to Ibrox.

The reality has been glorious, even more so after the early joy of beating PSV Eindhoven to reach the group stage of the Champions League. At that stage the roof fell in.

A 4-0 defeat from Celtic was followed by the worst ever Champions League campaign, van Bronckhorst was binned with a new Messiah hired to put Selik in their place.

The gap has apparently been closed but three defeats to Ange Postecoglou in three competitions has ensured another trophy-less season at Ibrox.

After losing 1-0 to Celtic in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup some bears reassured themselves that things couldn’t get any worse. How wrong were they?

Over the last two weeks they have watched the Murray Park starlets outclassed by scaled down versions of Ange-ball with the SFA Youth Cup and Glasgow Cup now at Celtic Park.

Those two matches have left the fabled Murray Park Academy looking exposed, it seems that future generations of serial losers are being created in the mould of James Tavernier.

Saturday’s visit of the champions is the last chance to salvage a consolation from this season, if the visitors play to form and win the fall-out will be spectacular.