What should we do By Donald C Stewart

Date: 19th December 2025

What should we do

By Donald C Stewart

When things are going wrong, what should we do?

If you look at the Premiership, what you see is Dundee United having 1 win in 11 with people suggesting that Jim Goodwin might not be the man for the job, until he beat Celtic, not a big deal to some…

Motherwell at one point were playing incredibly attractive football but not necessarily getting the results on the board but now they’re sitting third.

Hibs under David Gray are resurgent and are looking now likely to be comfortable in the top six though they have had a blip recently.

Then there is the question hanging over the head of Jimmy Thelin at Aberdeen. The Dons have crawled into the top six having after a terrible run and dropped out of Europe but told everybody time and time again that this was a long-term project.

St Mirren are getting the wins back on the board with Stephen Robinson now a saintly presence in Paisley having won the League Cup.

Dundee are having issues with Steven Pressley but then again, they had issues with Steven Pressley before Steven Pressley was at Dundee.

The same could also have been claimed as the shooglie peg in the Rugby Park dressing room dropped its coat. Stuart Kettlewell was not welcomed with huge open arms when appointed by the Killie faithful, and their recent run of form, coupled with the relationship he had with water bottles suggested the pressure was getting to him. And now, he is down the job centre.

The two clubs that have come up from the Championship, Falkirk and Livingston, are not exactly close in terms of their places or points – one sitting in seventh and the other anchored at the foot of the table with a game in hand over Kilmarnock, but three points behind them: Livingston are in a dog fight. Will David Martindale ever be asked to leave the Livingston dressing room and on his way to sainthood, could anybody suggest that John McGinn will leave Falkirk without going to a more lucrative position in another club?

Then there are the top three.

Rangers? Are they running out of managers or roads down which to try and hide? Are they harking back to the days before Graeme Souness and his Revolution? Are these bleak, dark times for the Ibrox club?

It’s cold comfort for the Bhoys. Now that King Midas has left Parkhead as Wilfred Nancy seems unable to put points on the board, win cup finals, look half decent in Europe, buy a defence, etc. etc. etc. It is difficult to see how their turnaround of fortunes shall be managed, though we all expect they shall. Just exactly what conversations have happened post-Hampden will have been… difficult, fascinating, embarrassing, tough… They had won several games thanks, of course, to the aforementioned Midas touch of Martin O’Neill, so what were they thinking in letting him go?

Hearts, on the other hand, are imperious at the top of the league, having beaten Celtic in their clash of the Titans and are now sitting six points ahead though Celtic do have one game in hand – but they do have to win a game. That is no longer a racing certainty.

Winning the League Cup for St Mirren, may mean, for Steven Robinson that he gets a season that can be underwhelming and he won’t have to get out the hotseat till the end of it: worked for Danny Lennon at St. Mirren and Calum Davidson at St Johnstone.

Who’s to know?

What do we do in the meantime, fans?

What is it that we want to see our club do to succeed or are there things that make you start to question whether your loyalty has been taken for granted and you want to scream about it from the terraces?

The Scottish Premiership is testimony to the way fans’ voices can often be ignored. Take kick off times… Not settled to suit the supporters but arranged for the broadcasters – because they pay.

Not as much as the fans do, however.

Rangers, Hearts and Motherwell, to name a few have shown in the recent past exactly what fan power can do.

They changed, to one extent or another, the landscape in their clubs or the survival of their footballing communities.

They turned up every single week, chanted the chants, sang the songs, clapped and applauded the players.

But now is the hour to collectively decide.

Whilst the Premiership looks more interesting than it has done for a long time now, perhaps the time is ripe to ask, nay demand, some change. So, what is it you would most like to see?

Of course, next year, you know what’s coming, we’re going to have an opportunity to put those ideas and points of view across to politicians and ask them to put in their manifesto what we think and believe.

Don’t underestimate yourself.

Scottish football is not just the largest mass participation sport in Scotland, it is also, in European terms, the largest per head of population attended football in the whole of the continent.

We are not just the Tartan Army.

We are not just the most welcome addition to any Euro or World Cup ever held.

We are more than that.

Collectively, we can be unstoppable.

So, pick up your keyboard, click on the link, join in, and let’s get together and make changes.

And who knows?

The Scottish Cup could be the only one that Rangers and Celtic are going to be competing for by the end of this season. And that won’t be simply because the players in the park are not playing for their badge. It will be because the support that fans have given to their clubs, the likes of St Mirren and Hearts, are going to ensure that we have a more competitive league and a better product for sponsors in the future.

That’s the power that fans have.

 

Scotland’s national independent fans organisation, the Scottish Football Supporters’ Association (SFSA), is reaching out to all football stakeholders to contribute to form a National Football Manifesto

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Posted in: Fan's Blog, Latest News

Tags: oor Donald, SFA, SFSA, SPFL