The number of Rangers fans we’re seeing who ignore the facts is a bit unhelpful, as many argue fruitlessly that the club is ‘not far behind Celtic’ or there’s ‘not a massive difference’ between the two sides.

They ignore Celtic’s relentlessness, their will to win, their champion mentality, and big up Connor Goldson as Scotland’s best defender.

And as more and more public Rangers men vividly express the opposite, it starts to get delusional on the part of many of our fans who still think we’re ‘not too far behind’.

Richard Gough, Barry Ferguson, Ally McCoist, Kris Boyd and Michael Beale himself have all admitted we’ve got some major work to do, but the fans ignore it and reckon we’re close to matching the Parkhead lot.

It’s Beale’s own comments about requiring at least five new players, to ‘help’ the squad, specifically the first team, that surely we have to take at face value.

We don’t trust our manager’s word most of the time, but Ferguson and Gough as well as ourselves, not to mention Brian Laudrup have all alluded to exactly the same thing – that we’re falling short and it needs major work.

We get it, fans support – they big their team up and see the positives. They portray Goldson as great, Tavernier as terrific, and Morelos and magical, when none of these three match what our counterparts have across the city.

Maybe they did once, maybe the 55 Rangers had a bunch of the best players, and of course it did, it won the league by a landslide.

But that was then – this is now, and these same players aren’t at that level anymore. Not for us anyway.

So yes, Beale is bang on – we need a whole heck of a lot of surgery this summer, the problem being that doing so isn’t going to be easy and getting notably better players than the weary and indeed aging squad we currently have will be a challenge and a half.

To be specific, Beale said:

In a nutshell, we need more, and no amount of fans saying ‘we’re very close’ will make it true.

Because we’re not.