The BBC asks ‘what’s gone wrong for Derek McInnes?’ Here’s your answer, Clive. Celtic broke Staunch Del on the final day of last season, and he hasn’t been right since…

Clive Lindsay of the BBC has a question this morning.

R*****s: What’s gone wrong for Derek McInnes and his side?

And underneath it, this.

After R*****s’ Europa League qualifying defeat by Jagellonia Bialystok, what is going wrong for new manager Derek McInnes and his side so far this season?

Well Clive, seeing as you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you.

And it won’t cost you a penny, which is more than the Ibrox side can say about the last six weeks.

Nothing has ‘gone wrong’.

Not one single thing.

What you are watching is not a malfunction, it’s a continuation.

The answer to your question happened on a Saturday afternoon in May, at Celtic Park, in the 87th minute.

Remember that one??

Hearts had led that table from August.

Nine months at the top, the SMSM measuring them for the blazers, the Gorgie men installed as the people’s champions before a ball had been kicked in the spring.

And then they came to our place on the final day and collapsed under the weight of their own siege mentality, and Callum Osmand rolled a third one into an empty net in front of 60,000 of us.

Champions again.

The man in the away dugout that afternoon was Derek McInnes.

That is where this starts.

Not at Easter Road, not against Jagiellonia, not in whatever tactical tweak Andy Halliday is picking apart on Sportsound this week.

That afternoon.

The Ibrox side then went out and hired the man that happened to, and somehow nobody over there thought to ask how he took it.

Because here’s the bit the Stenography Corps will never write down.

A manager doesn’t walk away from a thing like that unmarked.

He spent nine months building a lead, and he lost it in the last three minutes of the last game of the season, in our ground, to us.

Then he was handed the biggest job of his life by people who watched it happen and decided it made him the right man.

And now, four games in, he’s the worst start of any Ibrox manager barring caretakers, and the BBC would like to know what’s gone wrong.

Jesus wept.

Look at what the man is actually saying, because he’s telling you himself and nobody is listening.

Here he is after Thursday night.

The club is built for the Champions League and Europa League, but I don’t think the team is ready for it and it pains me to say it.

Not ready.

After ten in the door.

After £24 million gross.

And then after the Record ran the sums and called him their Jurgen Klopp.

We need to get more quality, we need to get more confidence into the team.

More quality.

The man has had ten signings and he’s standing in front of a camera in August asking for more quality, and Alasdair Mair’s calculator is still warm.

Do you see it yet, Clive??

He isn’t describing a squad problem.

He’s describing a man who already knows.

And credit where it’s due, he’s more honest about it than anyone at Ibrox has been in fifteen years.

Asked about his own support booing his team off the park, he said this.

I think it was justified, to be honest.

Justified.

That’s a manager who has stopped selling.

That’s not staunchness, that’s a man doing the maths in public.

Steven Thompson reckons Armitage Shankland is feeling the weight of the shirt, and I’m sure he is, but the captain isn’t the one who lost a title in the 87th minute at Celtic Park and then took the job that came out of it.

Which brings me to the funniest thing I have read all week, and there has been stiff competition.

Halliday gets a good run in Lindsay’s piece, and his solution to all of this?

Phone James Tavernier.

The man they released in the summer.

The man I have called Captain Disappointed on this site more times than I can count, 34 years old, no club.

Sitting at home in August waiting on his mobile going off to the tune of Simply the Best.

It’s not going to be popular, but the first thing Rangers should do in terms of recruitment is phone James Tavernier tomorrow.

Ten in, ten out, £24 million spent, and the fix is to ring the fella you turfed out in June.

I rest my case.

Now, on Tuesday I wrote a piece about all of this, and I want to be straight about how it has aged.

I said in that article that their window was a supermarket sweep with the trolley on fire.

Ten in, ten out, £24 million gross, £11.8 million net, and five more bodies wanted before the third of September.

Two things I called have landed.

That they would start the week 5 points adrift of the top of the table.

And that they would be eliminated from the Europa League on Thursday.

They duly went out on Thursday and dropped into a Conference League play-off against Jablonec, a side we knocked out in 2021.

And the panic buying has carried on regardless, because Couhaib Driouech is on his way in, or is he?

Who knows?

Youssef Chermiti’s knee has gone the week after they knocked back a big-money bid for him, so now they need a striker as well.

The luck is matching the planning over there.

The third thing I said, I don’t get to score yet, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

I said if they lost on Thursday night, Ibrox would be toxic when St. Mirren came to town for their League Cup tie.

Lose that one, and Del’s blazer would be on a shoogly peg, with his platform brown brogues teetering on the edge too.

Thursday went as predicted.

We’ll find out about Sunday the day after tomorrow.

So that one is sitting there unresolved.

And anybody telling you it’s in the bag hasn’t been paying attention to the Sevco comedy shit show.

Because that’s the part I’m not celebrating just yet.

I’ll save that for Sunday evening, all going well.

We have four in the door at Celtic Park, and hell of a lot more to be optimistic about.

We have a manager who finally got the club moving by refusing to be messed about, and that is genuinely better than anything we’ve seen in two years.

So we now have the leg room to enjoy the clown show across the city.

Even though we have the small matter of negotiating a tough League Cup tie at Tannadice ourselves tomorrow evening.

But the same men are still upstairs.

The same magic £3 million ceiling, the same phone call to the golfer, the same instinct to haggle over a couple of hundred grand until the price goes up.

The other magic number (£25 mill) was nearly hit with Arne Engels, but I’m sure with the ‘ol add ons, it isn’t too far off.

One good week does not undo them.

So there’s your answer, Clive.

Nothing has gone wrong at Ibrox this month.

The wheels came off in the 87th minute on the final day of last season, and they hired the man they came off underneath.

Everything since has just been the noise of him finding that out in public.

Two out of three so far.

Ask me again on Sunday night…

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