AMIDST MELTDOWNS GALORE FOR RANGERS, CELTIC NEED TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
“Are they not here yet?”
“I thought they said they were coming??”
Is there anything worse than someone who keeps insisting with increasing confidence and aggression that they are coming, and yet never seem to arrive at the party?
Well, that’s how the rest of Scottish football have been feeling about Rangers for most of the past decade.
They’ve had enough false dawns in the past decade to give a vampire PTSD. Yesterday’s scoreline, and the utterly insipid performance that accompanied it, would seem to suggest that normal service has now, very much, resumed at Ibrox.
Despite a Faltering Rangers, Celtic Still Need to Step Up Several Gears
Mockery is of course the first instinctive reaction when you see a result like yesterday. It means, with postponements and other factors coming into play, if Celtic can win their remaining league games for the month of August, we could find ourselves 10 points clear of the Govan Dodgers, albeit having played a game more.
That still seems far away though, for a Celtic team that is still nowhere near its top level, and which I think we all agree is still about 3 or 4 signings away from getting the genuine refresh the manager said was needed after last season.
My only concern at the moment is that our Board may see yet another impending collapse over at the stadium John Brown played for as an excuse to continue with their current, minimalist attitude when it comes to Celtic’s ambitions.
I’ve been saying for months that Rangers are, in the long term, an irrelevance, regardless of who owns them. Celtic’s ambitions should center on Europe for the foreseeable future. We should look to emulate similar clubs in smaller countries, like PSV, Brugge, Benfica and others.
Before we can look to Europe though, we need to confirm our place at the top of Scottish football, and means dishing out a long-overdue skelping to that Tribute Act across Glasgow and their new owners.
To be sure of doing that, we need players in, and we need time for them to settle into our formation. Our European adventure begins in 10 days. Almost immediately after that, we have the first Glasgow Derby. August could define our season.
Champions League qualification, and a huge lead in the Scottish Premiership are both within reach. I hope players will arrive next week, giving them at least some time to prepare for what lies ahead.
For now, though, we have to focus on Aberdeen this afternoon. Before the inevitable arrival of any more players, there will be quite a few Celts returning from last season who will feel they have a point to prove, against Aberdeen in particular.
Our record at Pittodrie is good, you have to go back to the days of the original Rangers (Requiescat in Pace) to find the last time Celtic failed to score there. Still, this is not an easy game, and Aberdeen also have a point to prove, having been made to look rather amateurish by a revitalized Hearts side in last week’s season opener.
So, yes, by all means let’s have a good laugh at our fiscally and facially challenged friends over at Ibrox. But let’s do so after we’ve got the points secured later today.