Barry Ferguson is the last vestige of a dying breed at Ibrox, someone who thrived on beating Celtic with other people’s money
Eric Knott 
(Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
Barry Ferguson is a dinosaur.
An example of a player who grew up in an era when Rangers 1872 was awash with other people’s money.
Where they were lording it over Celtic in an era where they thought their dominance would never end.
There are videos out there of Ferguson as an awestruck teenager in a victorious Rangers 1872 dressing room.
Grinning from ear to ear as his heroes sang about being up to their knees in Fenian blood.
Along with many other well loved wonderfully cultural ditties, of course.
This superiority complex that Ferguson suffers from was formed in that environment.
It bred a supremacist attitude that cannot and will not be quelled.
Not only did it breed that, it also bred an undying hatred for all things Celtic.
When you grow up in an atmosphere like that during your formative years, you are beyond help.
Some people recognise it for what it is, and choose to shun it.
Terry Butcher got totally sucked into that atmosphere and that culture.
Until one day he woke up and realised there was something radically wrong with it.
Others chose to embrace it, and Ferguson has always embraced it.
He grew up in it, which means he knew no different.
Barry Ferguson suffers from such a superiority complex that it blinds him from the fact he is a shit football manager.
Not only does it blind him from that, it also blinds him from the fact he is involved with a shit football team.
He cannot comprehend that what he is involved in bears no resemblance whatsoever to what he was involved in almost 30 years ago.
He also chooses to ignore that what he was involved in 30 years ago was NOT built on a “winning mentality”.
Rather, it was entirely built on other people’s money.
Since 2012, finance of the level that club used in the 1990’s has been non-existent.
It hasn’t been for the want of trying.
But that effort has resulted in the club plunging further and further into debt.
Hence the reason the new club has won only 3 trophies in it’s short existence.
Trophies, which in reality, have cost them an absolute fortune.
The current entity has desperately tried to be what the dead club was.
But without other people’s money, it has proven impossible.
The problem for Barry Ferguson is that he cannot accept that.
He cannot see it.
The success of the old club was success that was bought.
There wasn’t any magical winning formula there.
It’s easy to win everything when millions upon millions are ploughed into your team.
Especially in a league where players of opposing teams, with the exception of Celtic, were probably on about £250 a week in the 1990’s.
People say that it’s easy for Celtic to win trebles like we do at the moment because we’re awash with money.
But there’s one fundamental difference.
Yes, we have tens of millions in reserve, but it isn’t other people’s money.
It doesn’t come from a limitless overdraft.
It is our club’s money, accumulated by our club through good governance and good fiscal management.
If people wish to hold that against us, then that’s their problem, not ours.
We are where we are because while Barry Ferguson’s team was busy spending other people’s money to buy their success in the 90’s, we were busy putting the foundations in place for long term sustainability.
The kind of sustainability which has led us to dominate most of the 21st century.
It is this scenario that Barry Ferguson struggles to come to terms with.
His mentality cannot handle it, or comprehend it.
Because he was brought up believing that Rangers 1872’s default position was to dominate Scottish football.
Therefore, by default, it should always be that way.
He is unwilling to acknowledge how they did that.
He will not even acknowledge that he was an EBT recipient.
Ferguson conveniently chooses to ignore that he was part of cheating on an industrial scale.
He cannot do that because it is not compatible with his “winning mentality”.
Or more to the point, a mentality formed on the basis that you must win at all costs.
By fair means or foul.
I think it’s fair to say most of what was won at Ibrox during Ferguson’s time was won by foul means.
Yesterday’s outburst from Ferguson was a perfect example of the superiority complex he suffers from.
He cannot accept that because he is such a shit manager, his club are willing to hire a rookie over him.
He believes that being a “Real Raynjurz man” gives him the divine right to manage that club.
Ferguson takes it as a personal insult that the club are even considering this.
Did it never occur to him that he was set up to fail?
That Patrick Stewart decided to do this with the attitude, “what’s the worst that could happen here?”
Because when you look at it, what WAS the worst that could happen?
Ferguson was either going to make a total arse of himself, or he would make it work.
There WAS nothing to lose when they gave him the role.
Everything at that point was already lost.
As it happens, Ferguson finished up somewhere in the middle in terms of what was expected of him.
He didn’t totally embarrass himself, nor did he set the world alight.
He had two signature results in getting the better of Jose Mourinho and Brendan Rodgers.
There is no doubting that when he is a decrepit and bitter old fart, doing the rounds of the Orange Lodges, these two results will be his signature party pieces.
But while Ferguson didn’t totally embarrass himself on the playing field, with the exception of passing notes in a Europa League quarter-final, he did totally embarass himself with his batshit crazy press conferences.
Which ended up at peak batshit craziness yesterday.
In Ferguson’s own mind, as a result of his misplaced superiority complex, he believes he should be considered for the role as permanent Ibrox manager.
But if you were Patrick Stewart, you would realise by now that by taking the gamble on Ferguson, that you inadvertently let a lunatic run the asylum.
When Stewart thought to himself, “what do we have to lose by giving the job to Barry Ferguson?”, then the answer was pretty clear.
Any ounce of credibility your club might have left.
Ferguson is a dinosaur, he is the last vestige of a dying Ibrox breed.
When he, and his misplaced superiority complex, walks out the door of the manager’s office, then it might just be a case of out with the old, and in with the new.
New ownership, new manager, new mentality, and new rules for a neanderthal fanbase.
Ferguson represents everything that has ever been wrong with that club.
In it’s dead format, and current format.
His departure might just signal the end of an era.
Of course, it’s all just because he’s Scottish, you know?
What else could it possibly be??
I hope super barry stays in charge because it will give all the other teams a better chance of beating the new rangers team.
Eh, Bankrupt Barry. Who’d have thought.
What an arrogant little weasel he is
30% win rate and still believes he should be given a chance.
That dinosaur needs to be extinct along with his fellow hun scum.
barry must stay forever and ever and ever heh heh aint huns dumb
It’s the sheer arrogance that pisses me off the most. This assumption that other Teams should show deference to the name of a liquidated Club.
The nonsense spilled constantly about the Club being built on winning when all it was built on was the misappropriation of the name, status, and and carved out basket of assets from the carcass of a dead Club.
OldCo may live on in the hearts and souls, assuming that they have them,8 of Ferguson and others of his ilk, but for the rest of us, grounded in reality and safe in the knowledge that in the records of Company’s House, BDO the liquidators and even Sevco itself that the records show forevermore that the ‘The Tribute Act’ is a new Club and that we will always remind them of that verifiable Legal fact in opposition to their Big Lie.
Wishing that something is real doesn’t make it real anymore than expecting other people to be complicit with their fantasy.
We will live in the real world and as long as they have to assume the mantle of DeidCo to give some semblance of meaning to their alternative Universe that exists only in their heads, then they are going nowhere except the same route as the first iteration of ranjurs, oblivion.