I think part of the thing that makes this so annoying is that it's hard to be detached, but it's also impossible to be meaningfully engaged.
A few people - a few good Rangers fans I know - think that there's something fundamentally wrong with taking an interest in these things. It oversteps the bounds of what a fan actually is - we're just playing a part in the ongoing story that is Rangers, a part that involves defiant loyalty in the bad times so you can share fully in the good times. Getting involved in the politics and economics and such things is not to take it too seriously, but to mis-spend your energy. Being a fan is making banners, singing at games, moaning in the pub and in general just living triumph and despondency through your set of players. I think there's something to be said for this outlook, and it bypasses the problems we currently have of wanting to be involved. It says that Rangers is not a cause, but just a way of life. It says, no matter what happens, we'll be there next year as much as we can, we'll buy the strip and get down to the more serious matter of supporting whichever set of lucky players gets to put on the shirt, and leave all the background stuff to those qualified to deal with it. Just being a football fan.
Though I like this way of thinking about it, and think it can provide some sanity for us because we're just impotent in the whole affair, I don't think it's right. It may have been possible back when going to a game cost peanuts, and there weren't such massive dangers looming over the club. It's hard not to look to the above view, which would have been perfectly fine to endure in any decade up until now, possibly, and call it apathy. It's just not caring, or realising the stakes involved. But even realising the gravity of the situation, realising the mismanagement, realising it's just lazy to do nothing, we are almost in an almost uniquely impotent position. Murray (or his mob) own everything. And because the value of everything is so high (or, indeed, so low) most people can't afford to both support their team and club together to buy anything like meaningful clout. Because the game is so money driven, and the kind of money involved is way beyond the reach of fans, we necessarily can't do anything beyond moan. Even as the single biggest investor in the club, we're not investors in the sense that counts. We pay money (those who do), and we get something in return. We don't pay in so much money the club can afford to buy players and put out a team on the park.
Sometimes I wonder if we're like Europe in general. All the growing economies in the East have made us realise how small our growth is. We're living in massive luxury as though we were the up-and-coming lot, and hidden underneath this is all the dodgy recession economics, and bloated self-confidence. We assumed, like Murray, that the bubble couldn't burst. Now we're in the horrible hangover of recession, where we need to re-evaluate our quality of life, and what it is that's sustaining it. The only reason fans have no say is because we don't have the financial clout. How can a club go so far beyond the bound the income provided by their supporters, to the extent that whatever they do is essentially meaningless? Artificial bloating, like the house prices, provided by Sky money and such things, I think.
I wonder if the dark undercurrent to all this is that we can't have a say while we live beyond our means. It would take for us to go back to being a slightly-better-than-average SPL side, and ditch all our star players to fit in with a wage structure more in keeping with the rest of the SPL and the income provided by the support. This would give us a say, but we couldn't accept it. We would have a 100% stable economy if we all didn't want to have so much stuff, and live such a cooshy lifestyle. For the fans to be meaningfully represented I think would mean the club prospered insomuch as we invested, and failed insomuch as we didn't. In reality, we rely on so many other things.
I dunno. Just rambling.
ETA: Just to relate it back to the topic. It seems like the more we want success and investment the more we will ourselves out of any meaningful participation. It's the massive difference between Murray's chequebook, and it's ability to bring success, and ourselves and the money we can contribute, that's left us so far out of power. We now know it was really the money we'd put in, and money he didn't have, he was spending, but it was his massive chequebook that gave him that power in the first place. Why do we criticise Ellis? He doesn't seem to have the financial clout or the love of Rangers. Why do we want someone like King? Because he has the money and loves Rangers - he's, in our imagination, like having ourselves at the helm. Getting a Rangers-loving millionaire would bring success at the expense of putting us further and further out of touch. I don't think we can have it both ways. Anyone coming in - actually buying Rangers - at the end of the day would only include us as an act of charity, or condescension. They wouldn't be obliged to in any financial/power sense, unless we voted with our feet and stopped putting money into the club. At that point, though, you've stopped being a fan and become something else, and I think too many people just go for the enjoyment and day out to approach it in that way.
