champions have to show their mettle once again... or who's afraid of paul le guen?

Now that that minor distraction over in Germany is finally over with we can at last get back to another season supporting the Champions. And what a season it promises to be.

Not for us, of course, if you are a reader of the red tops or a listener to tabloid style phone-ins. Despite any evidence to the contrary, Celtic's runaway league championship victory was only made possible because Hearts are run by a loony with a penchant for sacking managers and Rangers were in a state of temporary hiatus caused by a slight cash flow problem.

With the shops (Orcs R Us) all sold off to pay for the new Ibrox manager's fabled wish list it's going to be a different story this season. For this is no ordinary man Rangers have signed up to lead them to undreamed of glory. This is a man who runs marathons across the desert... and that's before he's even had his breakfast (two cactus plants washed down with a cup of molten lava).

He has never signed a dud player in his life, he has a visionary master plan that would be the envy of a James Bond villain, a European pedigree that would shame Zsa Zsa Gabor's shitzu and his pronouncements on football make Andy Gray sound like... er, Andy Gray.

Paul Le Guen is here bhoys and ghirls, and if we had any sense at all we would simply gift wrap the league flag right now and simper away behind the couch along with the rest of the also-rans of the SPL. The only reason he hasn't taken a job at the very pinnacle of European football during the last two years is because he's been doing something much more important. Talking about it on the telly.

Not only that, but there's big money heading his way. Darrel King of the Evening Times says so, and he should know. There's a huge cheque from JJB Sports in the post for eighteen million quid, and there's all that dosh from last season's historic Champions League run, that's, er, let me see now... Well, millions anyway.

One Le Guen gets his hands on it he'll wipe the floor with us. Like Ajax (you're fired - Ed). Be afraid. Be very afraid.

But seriously folks, does anybody remember a fella called Dick Advocaat? Wee guy, dodgy barnet?

He was here a few years ago and Darrel's mob were saying pretty much the same kind of thing. The difference was that he did have some cash to throw around and he actually had some half decent players there already.

PLG has a major job on his hands to reconstruct even his first eleven, far less fit into the team the rolling conveyor of talent trundling his way from Murray Park, a list of names which is seemingly beginningless.

Wee Dick disappeared up the marble staircase sharpish once the heat was turned up. Le Guen is about to discover that he's bitten off a helluva lot by taking on the Rangers job, and he's going to have to do a lot of chewing if he is to make as good a job of it as his counterpart at Celtic Park.

He might even discover that the supporters whose virtues he has recently been extolling were round the corner getting a second helping of bile when the tolerance of failure was being handed out. Glasgow or Lyon: where would you rather be living and working when it starts to go tits to the ceiling?

Still, I can tell what you're thinking. It could well be that all this withering sarcasm and seething satire will blow up in our faces come next May. Le Guen might yet turn out to be a league winning manager in his first season - we've seen plenty of them recently - and get them back in the Champions League the season after next.

Until he does, though, you'll forgive us if we don't subscribe to the sycophancy coming from Murray's lickspittles in the media. From a Rangers point of view this would appear to be throwing the last of your chips down on the table. It's up to Gordon Strachan and the Celtic board to scrape them up with that wee croupier's rake thing before showing them to the door.

WGS showed last season that he had the bottle for the fight by overcoming the most adverse circumstances at the beginning of his career to win the title in some style. He'll have a tougher job to make a fist of it on all fronts this season, but he has, at the very least, earned himself some time and patience to attempt the task without undue pressure from the ranks of our own. Good luck to him and the players for the coming months.

MARMADUKE BAGLEHOLE