I'm starting to wonder what the point is of having a football season where everything is essentially decided by Christmas. Though it should be noted that that's not Celtic's problem - they're doing to job in front of them as well as they can, and it's really not their problem that that means they easily outclass everyone else.
But it remains the case that the league is deadly dull, and largely pointless. And that's just not going to change until Rangers get their act together.
Right now, it would be easy to blame the management for the problems, and indeed it is likely that the current manager is not the right man for the job, at least in the longer term. But it's also the case that Rangers' players have underperformed under several successive managers; they're not up to the job either. And it's further the case that Rangers don't have the requisite money to fix these problems.
So...
My inclination is now that Rangers need to take a long view of this, and build from the foundations out. That means accepting a hard truth: they are very much the second team in Scotland, and will remain so for a very long time. Indeed, they're pretty much a mid-table team.
The strategy, therefore, should probably be to do enough to retain their second-place standing and do as well as possible in Europe, but not to spend money trying to catch or overhaul Celtic. Instead, let the manager and the more expensive players run out their contracts, and gradually replace them with better players - crucially, don't spend loads of money on compensation for getting rid of them for a quick fix - short of investing tens of millions of pounds that they don't have, no quick fix is available.
Fundamentally, I think we may be back to where we were a few years ago: the ultimate goal is to stop ten-in-a-row.
Which is horrible, but I think it may be that stark.
#1: "Machines Like Me", by Ian McEwan
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