At least Celtic are guaranteed European football if we lose to LASK. The Ibrox side are guaranteed nothing at all if they fail against Jablonec, and Ally McCoist knows it…
Ally McCoist is getting the heebee jeebees as Jablonec at home draws closer. Could the unthinkable of no European football at Ibrox happen?
Eric Knott 
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - AUGUST 13: Rangers Manager Derek McInnes during a UEFA Europa League Third Qualifying Round Second Leg match between Rangers and Jagiellonia Bialystok at Ibrox Stadium, on August 13, 2026, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Ally McCoist has spent the day telling anyone who will listen that he’s worried about the Ibrox side.
And for once, I’m not going to argue with him.
Here is what the Ibrox legend had to say about Thursday night:
I’m concerned about R****s. R*****s not in Europe is unthinkable. No European football would be absolutely unthinkable.
Looking at the team the last couple of years, it breaks my heart to say it. For a team that was a penalty kick probably away from winning the Europa League.
Fair enough.
Four years ago they were ninety minutes and a penalty shootout away from lifting a European trophy in Seville.
On Thursday night they host Jablonec of the Czech Republic in a Conference League play-off they cannot afford to lose.
That is a fall by any measure you care to use, and there is no point in anybody pretending otherwise.
The difference between the two halves of this city right now is that one of us has a safety net and the other one doesn’t.
Because here is the part of Thursday night that should genuinely be keeping Ally McCoist awake.
We play LASK on Wednesday evening in the first leg of our own Champions League play-off tie.
If we come through it over the two legs, we are into the Champions League league phase.
And if we lose it, we drop straight into the Europa League league phase instead.
Either way, Celtic will be playing European football after August.
Either way the European money comes through the door at Celtic Park this season.
Now have a look at what Thursday night actually means over at Ibrox.
Win the tie and they are in the Conference League league phase.
Lose it and that is the end of their entire European season.
No league phase, no European nights, no money, nothing at all until next July.
There is no safety net underneath the Conference League play-off, because the Conference League is already the bottom.
That is simply what happens to a club that keeps falling and calls it a project.
Eventually you run out of competitions left to fall into.
They’re only in this play-off in the first place because they couldn’t get past Jagiellonia Bialystok, and we all watched that happen.
And let us not lose sight of exactly how they came to be in this play-off at all.
They were knocked out of the Europa League by a Polish side last week.
We covered the fallout at the time, and Barry Ferguson was straight out defending Staunch Del before the dust had settled.
The Conference League place is nothing more than the consolation prize for that failure.
And now there is every chance they don’t even get to keep the consolation prize.
Apparently that’s where nine signings and a summer of staunchness gets you.
McCoist, to be fair to him, isn’t dressing it up.
Rangers have slipped, there’s no doubt about it. Rangers have slipped. I use the word slipped, they’ve probably cascaded off a mountain to be honest with you, to where we are now.
Being brutally honest with you, the last two or three years and this isn’t down to Derek McInnes, I think the last two or three years we’ve looked like a Conference League side.
I’d read that last line of his one more time if I were an Ibrox supporter.
A Conference League side.
That’s not me saying it, and it’s not some bitter Tim on Twitter saying it.
That is their own record goalscorer, sitting on national radio, saying it out loud.
He’s absolutely right, and the frightening part for them is that a Conference League side might not be good enough for the Conference League.
Make no mistake, this isn’t a gloat about one bad week.
McCoist isn’t describing one bad fortnight, he is describing three full years.
Three years of a club sliding down through the tiers of European football while telling everyone the corner is about to be turned.
And he’s right that it isn’t Derek McInnes’ fault.
The man has been in the job about five minutes.
He inherited this, the same way every Ibrox manager inherits it, and the same way the next one will.
In fairness to him, he got his first win on Sunday.
A draw, a defeat to Hibs and a European exit was the start he actually had, though.
Then again, we’ve been told all summer that this is the season the staunchness pays off.
Even the good news over there arrives with a punchline attached, because their answer to a genuine crisis is a 34-year-old free agent.
There is one part of this I’d never take any pleasure in.
Youssef Chermiti’s season is over, and McCoist called it a disaster.
He is not wrong either, and no supporter of any club wants to see a young player’s season ended that way.
Especially when the rumour is they’d knocked back twenty-three or twenty-four million for him.
That’s a genuinely rotten piece of luck, and I’ll say so.
But then McCoist got onto the solution.
He backed Andy Halliday’s idea of bringing James Tavernier back on a six-month deal.
That would be a man who left the club a year ago and hasn’t kicked a competitive ball for anybody since.
‘It wouldn’t be the daftest thing in the world’, apparently.
No doubt it wouldn’t.
In reality, when your plan for Thursday night involves phoning a 34-year-old who’s been unemployed since last summer, the panic has well and truly set in.
Celtic have their own problems, and I’ve written about most of them this week.
A thin midfield, a board that gambles, a manager working with less than he was promised.
But whatever happens against LASK on Wednesday, we’ll be in a European league phase this season.
They could quite easily have nothing at all.
And that, right there, is the gap between the two of us now.
Unthinkable, so it is…
Key Takeaways
- Ally McCoist expresses concern about Rangers’ European prospects, citing their drop to the Conference League play-off.
- Celtic faces LASK for a chance in the Champions League, ensuring they will play European football this season.
- Rangers’ poor performance led to facing Jablonec in a must-win Conference League tie, or face a complete season without European play.
- The club has been in decline for three years, struggling under managerial changes and poor outcomes.
- McCoist critiques the team’s reliance on a 34-year-old free agent, highlighting their ongoing crisis.
Choose Read Celtic as a ‘Preferred Source’ on Google News for quick access to the news you value.
Finishing third in a one horse race in the Scottish championship 24 points behind the winners then getting hammered 6-1 in the play offs he may have walked away earlier but be in no doubt he was responsible for that shambles it beggars belief that he is employed to give his thoughts on tv . You could not mark this con man’s neck with a blow torch.