Quintin Jardine's blog

I’m posting this an hour before Motherwell FC, my team and my curse, take the field to defend a two goal lead in the second leg of the play-off for a place in the Scottish Premiership next season. Their opponents, Rangers.

They will lose. Gary Lineker is credited with saying that the rules of football are simple. The game is played by teams of eleven a side and the Germans always win. There is a third rule that he overlooked. Motherwell never beat Rangers twice in a row.

The really terrible thing is that this time the Scottish game needs them to lose. We have to have Rangers back in the top flight, suitably humbled, yes, with lowered expectations, but Scottish football can’t do without them at that level.

If by some miracle,’Well do see them off this afternoon, the Gers face another year playing Hibs, St Mirren, Falkirk etc, another year of significant financial losses, and a steadily declining balance sheet. Sure, they now have Dave King as chairman. Yet I do not hear of  Mr King, who is said to have blown twenty million in his previous association with the club, having put any of his own cash into the pot this time around. He does have significant equity in the business, but this was acquired from  existing shareholders. His plan seems to be a share issue but this will be severely hampered if Rangers do remain in  the second tier. What would he do then? Stump up his own money? I wonder.

And if not? Suppose, heaven forfend, that he doesn’t actually have as much folding money as the Scottish media believes. Is the great Govan monolith as safe as we are told? That’s why Rangers have to win in a couple of hours. Our game can’t afford to discover that it is not.