There’s one, traditional punchline regarded as being the technical knock-out which finishes any disagreement between Celtic and Rangers supporters.
“Aye, but whit aboot them?” is the verbal blow to decide the contest. In the context of six Champions League group stage matches shared equally between the two clubs since the start of this season, the answer to that question is simple. One is as bad as the other. They are domestic giants and European pygmies when it comes to the highest level. Cannon fodder. Soft touches. Also rans. Do not delete any of the above. They are all applicable.
The only way they can contradict their current status is for one, or both, to achieve the consolation prize of finishing third in their group and qualifying for the drop down to the Europa League. The King of Govan, minus the formality of a coronation, is Sir Alex Ferguson. His immortal phrase about there being such a thing as “Squeaky bum time” was last week entered into the Oxford English Dictionary and is now accepted by academics as part of the country’s language.
But Rangers won’t need to open any book to find the definition of what it means. It’ll be staring them in the face when Liverpool arrive at Ibrox on Wednesday night. If you have the ability to be honest with yourself, the win for Jurgen Klopp’s side at Anfield last week proved one thing. The Champions League tells bitter truths.
There’s a reason why no English club ever came in for James Tavernier in spite of his phenomenal numbers in terms of goals and assists in the Premiership. He looked uncomfortable at Liverpool’s level. No club, British or foreign, is interested in paying millions to get Alfredo Morelos. He looked ineffective at Liverpool’s level.
Ben Davies and Ryan Kent got one game for Liverpool between them when they were there. Rangers paid eleven million pounds to buy them and both looked as over-awed as anybody else during the monstering on Merseyside.
Anfield wasn’t the manager, Giovanni Van Bronckhorst’s fines hour, either, in terms of team selection and the way he set his team up to play. And he tested the credulity of the listener to his post-match interview for the broadcast media when he said Rangers “Always had belief and competed very well.”
You could have fooled me. It’s not as if the Ibrox CEO, Stewart Robertson, could use the footage of that game as a showreel for broadcasters in the eternal quest to prove Scottish football is being undersold in a way that doesn’t reflect the quality of the product.
They’d take one look and tell him it looks as if we look to be getting paid what we’re worth, thanks very much. Three defeats so far mean no bonus payments for points. Bonuses have been replaced by minuses, with the exception of Alan McGregor.
His extraordinary goalkeeping has at least introduced a descending scale of failure. He came in after four goals were lost to Ajax, restricted Napoli to three at Ibrox and somehow kept the score down to two-nil at Anfield.
If that pattern’s maintained in midweek Liverpool will be one-nil winners. Unless Rangers can summon up the blood that has largely drained from their faces so far in the competition.
A win would be better than compensating for no bonuses by launching a commemorative strip to mark Liverpool’s first ever competitive appearance at Ibrox. If you’ve got four kits on the market simultaneously then you might as well have a fifth, I suppose.
But not selling the jerseys would be the ideal plan for Rangers on this occasion. And a half and half scarf as a souvenir of the occasion shouldn’t be the nearest thing to equality Rangers will achieve on the night, either.
But it’s up to the players who choked at Anfield to regulate their breathing.
Meanwhile Manchester United’s manager, Erik ten Hag, invented a new, executive class player last Sunday. He created the individual whose reputation is so stellar he can be spared the indignity of coming off the bench on to the pitch under difficult circumstances, even if the club who pay his wages are being torn apart by their city rivals in a derby.
Cristiano Ronaldo was considered too iconic to suffer guilt by association with team-mates of a lesser standing.
If Ange Postecoglou ever subscribed to that theory Callum McGregor would never play on a losing side with Celtic. The captain is the most influential, and inspirational, player at the club.
The enforced absence through injury of someone so essential to the team’s progress is therefore potentially catastrophic at domestic and European level. Starting with the Champions League game against RB Leipzig on Tuesday.
Particularly when Postecoglou’s main criticism of his team minus McGregor in Germany on Wednesday was that they lacked a positive mindset and went into survival mode. And the biggest concern of all is that the manager is starting to look visibly distressed by it all, possibly on the basis that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
The man who lifted an entire club when he found them at ground zero now looks, and sounds, troubled. The players who were the solution to the problem of Celtic having lost Ten in a Row by winning back the title from Rangers have now become the problem themselves.
The defence is vulnerable and prone to self-harm. The number of goalscoring chances being squandered equates to negligence.
A Celtic fan called into the radio last Monday to complain because I had described the 2-1 win over Motherwell as unconvincing. I had to laugh. If I was guilty of anything it was being un-characteristically restrained in my choice of words.
An own goal, a red card that was a self-inflicted wound and a catalogue of missed chances? What would you call it?
Unconvincing is beginning to sound like flattery. If you had one word to describe Celtic’s performance in Leipzig it would be inadequate. The concept of Celtic possessing strength in depth has now been called into question.
And there’s now a vacancy for a leader of men in McGregor’s unfortunate absence one month after he was a match for anyone in a Real Madrid shirt when they visited Celtic Park in the Europa League. It’ll be interesting to see who, if anyone, emerges.
Brendan Rodgers apparently took his Leicester City staff to Loch Lomond to reflect and re-set shortly before they won their first league game of the season, against Nottingham Forest, last Monday night.
Maybe Ange should hire the Maid of the Loch for a group cruise to see if it’s true the water there really does have restorative powers.
Celtic’s failure in Germany happened to fall on the one hundredth anniversary of Jock Stein’s birth, but it would be grossly unfair to make anything of that co-incidence.
You can’t forever compare Celtic sides to the one who won the European Cup fifty-five years ago. Their legacy is intact and theirs to keep until the end of time. What is allowable is to say the present day team is no longer meeting their own standards on a regular basis.
That’s the real worry and their problem to address. Right away.
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