I need to paraphrase a line of dialogue from a television programme watched by over twelve million people on Wednesday night in order to sum up Rangers’ prospects of winning this season’s league title.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, if you can’t beat St Mirren? When I coined the phrase “A draw’s a disaster, a defeat’s a catastrophe” to sum up the need for the Old Firm to realise every game they played was crucial it was, admittedly, for dramatic effect on the radio.

Now it sums up Sunday's match at Motherwell in a nut-shell for Philippe Clement. There was a chink of light, a feeling that the tide had turned in the manager’s favour because the fans at Ibrox had undergone a mood swing and re-assessed his coaching capabilities in a favourable fashion. But now it appears the light at the end of the tunnel was actually that of an oncoming train from Paisley.

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Rangers in general, and the Belgian in particular, suffer from cultural difficulties. The club is too caught up in a blame culture off the park which makes them play the victim card whenever anything goes wrong, such as the loss of the Premier Sports Cup final to Celtic on December 15.

And Clement is on his way to becoming the latest casualty of the culture of failure on the park which has lasted for over a decade and created a managerial merry go round at Ibrox as a consequence.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Scottish football’s appetite for suspicion is, and always has been, insatiable. This has been the year when clubs and supporters stopped talking about football altogether and focused on decisions and the people who make them, exemplified by Rangers’ letter to the SFA in the aftermath of the cup final lost to a penalty shoot-out against Brendan Rodgers’ side.

It spoke of decisions which “benefitted” Celtic. The only thing Celtic benefitted from was a flawless five penalties out of five when it came to deciding the outcome of the game. Rangers’ suggestion that the re-instatement of the VAR team who were responsible for making the mistake of denying them a legitimate penalty during extra-time at Hampden did carry some weight.

But mainly because what is regarded as provocative in the West of Scotland wouldn’t be regarded as being provocative anywhere else in the country. One of the match officials from that day at the National Stadium, Frank Connor, has been appointed to run the line at Celtic’s home game with St. Johnstone on Sunday, fuelling a suggestion of collusion for the conspiracy theorists.

Celtic can’t influence the appointment of match officials or worry over the assistant referee being at pains to prove his neutrality. They will just get on with it, which is currently the positive mindset which separates them from Rangers in terms of negotiating their league programme.

I don’t know if Mister Connor is a Celtic supporter and I couldn’t care less. If the defending champions can’t beat the bottom club, who trail them by a massive thirty-three points, then that will undoubtedly be their fault and nobody else’s.

Just like it was Rangers who had to take the blame for losing to St Mirren on a night when they lacked the conviction to dig themselves out of self-created difficulties, even against a side who finished the match with two 17-year-olds on the field.

On Boxing Day, Rangers were required to be genuine heavyweights in order to apply what psychological pressure they could on Celtic ahead of their derby game next Thursday.

They turned out to be temperamental lightweights and ended up on the canvas while taking a count of ten.

On the last working day of the year, Clement’s team need to beat Motherwell at Fir Park because any other result could prove to be fatal in the long run when it comes to him holding on to his job.

I don’t know who’s under greater pressure on derby day, Clement or the assembly of match officials chosen to work at Ibrox and in VAR central at Clydesdale House under conditions of unprecedented intensity.

Rangers’ new Chief Executive, Patrick Stewart, waited until the day after the cup final to start work and the rumour mill had it that his first task would be to agree the terms of Clement’s severance pay in the event of a defeat.

That turned out to be untrue and the manager’s stock subsequently rose on the back of better results and performances. Now he and Stewart are back to where they started.

If Clement fails to beat Celtic for a seventh consecutive time, and yet more ground is lost in the championship, it will mean Rodgers has won the title with half the season still to go. The Rangers manager is a hostage to fortune at that point.

Simple as.