Chick Young's view

By Chick Young BBC Scotland football correspondent

Is it really that time already?

It seems just a heartbeat since the campaign just passed breathed its last with Rangers fans mumping like tortured souls at the anti-climax of it all.

I remain baffled by their inability to recognise a miracle when they see one.

They should have enjoyed it while it lasted. Rangers won't be in any European final for the foreseeable future. And I won't be holding my breath for any of our other representatives either.

Bob Crampsey - a master of the English language

In fact, I find myself in a dark mood this season's eve, for I worry too about the South African campaign of our national side.

I suspect there was much cunning in the timing of the escape plan of Alex McLeish and that George Burley is left with the Lord Mayor's show to follow.

And, let's face it, we could do with a little ray of sunshine.

We lost one this week. The great Bob Crampsey.

I doubt I ever met a more remarkable man. Author, teacher, historian, musician, linguist, biographer, broadcaster and font of knowledge, Crampsey was also clearly invisible.

How else can you explain the disgraceful failure of Whitehall and the incompetents who masquerade as councillors in Glasgow to see that he was worth a knighthood, an MBE, an OBE or the freedom of his native city?

I called him Sir Bob. The nation should have been instructed to do likewise.

The man was a national treasure, with a vault of a brain that stored wit and wisdom by the cartload. He had a tortured love life, torn as he was between Queen's Park Football Club and Somerset's county cricket team.

Personally, I thought anyone's love of cricket to be more of a perversion and I told him so, but Bob Crampsey would have none of it and off he would motor to the southern parts of these islands with his packed lunch and flask.

Who pays for the Old Firm ticket levy - the home club or the fans?

He thought no more of it than as if he were popping out for a paper.

And the English language: how he could weave it into gold.

Even in the final months, as he was losing his war with that blasted Parkinson's Disease, he retained the impish sense of humour. I took him to lunch and he instructed me to sit on his left side.

"I'm having the soup," he said, "and the right hand could threaten your suit jacket."

Bless you Bob, we will never see your likes again. I know of no other football journalist who reads Mein Kampf in German because he doubted the translation and who could play Chopin and then state with authority what really happened to the lost tribes of the Incas.

But even the blessed Crampsey could have said with no certainty what lies ahead through the next 10 months, although he would have shaken his head in dismay at the greed of players and clubs who will one day strangle this game of ours.

How can the Old Firm, deadly rivals except when they smell money, jump into bed with one another to bump 5% on to the price of tickets for away games?

If only the Light Brigade had charged like that, they might yet have survived to tell the tale.

And the exclusion of Ross County, Dundee and Dunfermline from the elite youth scheme is such a tale of dark and dangerous work that it stinks like an open sewer.

Hardly a ball has been kicked in earnest, but the new season is wheezing more than a little already.

I look for some improvement in the patient over the next 10 months - the game owes it to Sir Bob.