There’s no doubt about it, for all the abuse this world cup has rightly taken (we’ll have entries on that in the coming days), if ever a world cup’s timing was better for Rangers and a complete rejection of our players more ideal, it was this.

With injuries piling up daily at Ibrox, the players are broken, completely broken, and whatever the cause is, with more time there would only be yet more personnel lost to one knock or another. Which is why the timing of this world cup, while being criticised by everyone, has coincidentally ended up being the best-timed world cup Rangers could have had.

Only Borna will go to Qatar, meaning our ENTIRE squad, which is completely spent, finished, cracked and shattered, gets 4+ weeks of utterly critical R&R because we were down to close to 12 fit players, and having to rely exclusively on the Academy for substitutes, which is an absolutely ridiculous state of affairs.

Whoever is to blame, whatever the cause right now doesn’t matter – the facts are, regardless of origin, the injuries are desperate and the players we do have have been rejected by their countries. Which is the best news we could have had.

Now the entire Rangers squad, aside arguably Ryan Jack and Robby McCrorie who go on Scotland duty imminently, will get absolute recovery time and the best chance of being fit going into 2023.

This world cup is the least popular one in history, no one likes it, no one wants it, where it is, or when it is, but it is what it is, and as a totally shocking silver lining, Rangers will probably benefit from it more than any other club in world football.

We even benefit, as we say, from our players being so rubbish this season that none of them go to Qatar bar Barisic, which means a month of pure recovery, and boy do we need it.

We desperately need a good 5-10 serious players back, regardless of the manager, because one more match, dropped points, loss whatever would have been desperate for fans. Forget the players and manager, the fans’ morale would have been even worse with another bad result.

So thank goodness for corruption and this awful world cup award to Qatar, because Rangers couldn’t need it more if we tried.