Keith Jackson has warned Micky Beale that defeat from Servette on Wednesday night will bring out the CRISIS headlines.
The cracked crest is unlikely to be used but after Saturday’s defeat at Kilmarnock questions are finally being asked about Beale’s cunning plan.
Starting just his second season in management the former QPR boss was lauded as the brains behind Steven Gerrard when the former Liverpool skipper won one trophy in nine during his stint at Ibrox.
Beale had eight months to prepare for Saturday’s match at Kilmarnock but send out a team that looked lost and unsure of what they were meant to do.
With no obvious width in the Ibrox ranks Kilmarnock packed the centre of the pitch and showed more imagination and menace when they went on the attack.
A howler from John Souttar presented Brad Lyons with a chance that he buried and there was no way back for Beale’s Gumtree Galacticos.
Every single one of the summer signings has been celebrated as an incredible piece of business, all delivered by the magic powers of a manager who insists on looking deeply into the eyes of potential signings before offering a contract.
Jackson watched Saturday’s car crash unfold in Ayrshire with the alarm bells going off for the Daily Record man as he fears another false dawn at Ibrox with Todd Cantwell cast aside for the next Revolution:
Beale believed new boys Abdallah Sima, Sam Lammers, Kieran Dowell and Cyriel Dessers would be better equipped than Cantwell to cause Kilmarnock concern but he – and they – got it horribly wrong.
With the heat cranking up, the manager is surely unlikely to make the same mistake again on Wednesday when Swiss side Servette arrive at Ibrox, looking to turn a drama into a full blown crisis by blocking the path into the Champions League.
Cantwell revels in taking on the creative responsibilities which seemed to spook Beale’s new recruits so profoundly that it sent them into their shells at the weekend.
It would seem like a curious error of judgement to attempt to relieve him of too much of that burden.
On the contrary, by sharing the load with the likes of Sima, Dessers and Dowell, Beale was effectively keeping his fingers crossed and hoping for the best, despite some fairly inconclusive evidence stacking up from all three during the pre-season.
Dessers looks like a powerful enough unit and may still be getting up to speed but the Nigerian international has hardly been in a hurry to start throwing his weight around and he left Kilmarnock’s defence almost entirely untroubled.
Sima has spent his first few weeks in Scotland giving off the vibe of a man who is desperately low on confidence after being bumped around on a series of loans by his own club and searching for the spark which made Brighton sign him in the first place
And Dowell is yet to show why Beale was so keen to get him out of Norwich as a free agent at the start of the summer. Of course, given time, all three could go on to become major contributors but, at such a delicate moment, Beale can’t afford to be stubborn about waiting for them to come good.
No, what the Londoner needs is some sort of instant signal that his team is moving quickly in the right direction and that his vision for its progression is clear and untangled.
That’s simply not been the case so far this summer and, after a messy, confused performance on opening day, Beale has to work out which of his players are good and ready to be relied upon before the situation becomes critical.
A win over Servette might help soothe some fraying nerves in a home support which suffers from a sense of recurring deja vu after witnessing so many false dawns over the last decade or so.
Restoring Cantwell to the side on Wednesday will be an easy vote winner for Beale but there has been no evidence in pre-season that TikTok is any better than the summer recruits.
The mix of free agents, relegated strikers and serial losers led by James Tavernier has disaster stamped all over it but since day one of his return to Ibrox Beale has been celebrated as a visionary, largely because he talks an awful lot more than Giovanni van Bronckhorst.
A year ago the Dutchman steered the club through two rounds of Champions League qualifiers thanks to a goal from Antonio Colak away to PSV Eindhoven.
The Croatian striker is the only player that Beale has sold since coming to Ibrox with last years Champions League hero shifted to raise funds to offset the fees spent on Dessers and Lammers.
Reaching the Champions League was what finished van Bronckhorst at Ibrox, if Beale fails to achieve that his tenure might be shorter than the 368 days that the Dutchman spent in charge.
Ibrox fans might want to keep an eye out for vultures downing pints and offering themselves for selfies pre-match in the Louden Tavern.
