We just have to point out that today after our win against Lech Poznan, Rangers have moved Scotland up to the 5th best-performing nation in the European coefficients.

That’s despite all the deadweight around us.

Yes indeed, with an average of 5.25 points Scotland is just behind Israel, with 5.5 added points; Italy is at 5.571 points; Spain (5.642 points); and England has only seen one loss and one draw amongst their seven qualifiers, now leads the country coefficients with an impressive 6.5 added points – so far.

Before accounting for the removal of Scotland’s disastrous 2016/17 season, which will occur next year, Scotland has moved up to 11th place in the league, to 2.5 points behind Austria who are placed 10th. Then next year, Scotland will drop our worst year score, but even if we were to stop the season now, Scotland would still rise to 8th place anyway, for the Champions League and Europa League, the year after next.

And, another good run should move us up to at least 7th, which is just one place behind Portugal, which brings us very neatly to our next opponents, Benfica, and we’ll have a review of that one later today.

But in the meantime, it’s actually kind of astonishing that a side struggling v Dumbarton 5 or 6 years ago and then gubbed by a diddy from Luxembourg in 2017 is now literally the cream of Europe and single-handedly hiking Scotland to co-efficient levels we’ve not seen for decades.

It’s been a long long time since we had two sides in the CL, although back then it was one in the group stage the other in the qualifiers.

But now, even having two in the qualifiers is a remarkable stat for a league as bad as the SPL, although when Rangers do go into the CL qualifiers next summer, there’s going to be one hell of a spike in quality.

But why do we think our manager is capable of it…