'Real Rangers stand up in Old Firm win, but can they keep standing?'
2025-01-03
Category: sports

So much for the narrative of Philippe Clement's Judgement Day morphing into Doomsday. So much for a Rangers team stripped of their goalkeeper, their right-back and two of their best centre-backs becoming another notch on Brendan Rodgers' belt.From a few minutes past three on Thursday, the Celtic manager looked antsy. He gesticulated his frustration in a way we rarely see from him on days like this. Normally, it's plain sailing. Here, it was the choppiest of waters, blue waves crashing.His main men, rumbled. Players who have lorded it over this fixture, hassled and harried and ransacked of possession. For a little while, none of this was huge cause for alarm for Celtic - they'd seen it before - until Rangers scored, then scored again.You rubbed your eyes at points at the physical mismatch. Rangers' hunger, workrate, creativity, ambition. Most of these players in blue were culpable in different ways and in varying degrees in dropping points in seven different league games so far this season, but this was a different story.A combined XI on the day would have had 11 Rangers men and none from Celtic. With no away fans allowed, Rangers also had the monopoly on wanton idiocy when Arne Engels was hit by a coin, the missile hitting him a few centimetres from his eye.Your team is 3-0 ahead in a fixture you haven't won in an age, your bitter rivals have been beaten at last, your players have delivered a thunderous performance - and your instinct is to throw coins. Whoever was responsible - find them, charge them, sentence them and ban them.
'Sustained assault was shock, for Celtic most of all'
Celtic have not been Rangers' problem this season. Their problem has been points lost against Hearts and Dundee United, Motherwell and Kilmarnock, Aberdeen and St Mirren.  Of the 18 dropped in the league, 15 of them had come against teams that Clement's side would be expected to beat, but didn't. Put it another way, Rangers' problem all this time has been Rangers.The wildly inconsistent performances, the confusing selections, the questionable tactics. Too much weakness. Too little direction and belief.So when they sustained their assault on Celtic's jugular, it was a shock. For Celtic most of all. 
Rangers led 1-0 and you waited for the visitors' response. Rangers led 2-0 and still you wondered when the backlash was coming. Long before Rangers led 3-0 you'd stopped wondering. Celtic had nothing to give. "We have to take our medicine," said a magnanimous Rodgers later on. He talked about edge and intensity and aggression, as in Rangers had it and his boys did not. He looked a touch stunned. He was hardly the only one.Rangers arrived with a rage for victory that you could understand. Fear can be a hell of a motivator if used in the right way. Fear of falling 17 points behind Celtic, fear of 50,000 people going thermonuclear in the stands, fear that a depleted defence with a left-sided player operating as a right-back against the bogey man that is Daizen Maeda, would be humiliated.They had all of that nervous energy, all of that anger, and how they channelled it.  The fact they delivered it when the league is already all but over - the gap dropping to 11 is no big deal for sensible Celtic folk - must have been perplexing to their fans but they were probably basking in the day too much to notice all that much.
'Clement has to stick with strongest XI'
Would the real Rangers please stand up? And is there any possibility that they might keep standing a while longer?There's been so much talk in recent weeks of Clement's selectorial chopping and changing, of the input of sports science and the impact it might have had on him resting players.Clement doesn't have the squad depth to play the tinkerman all that much. In defence, perhaps. He's just won a resounding victory without some key operators.Ridvan Yilmaz, the emergency right-back, was terrific. Maeda scarcely got a kick. Jefte did what most thought impossible when he silenced Nicolas Kuhn. Dujon Sterling and Robin Propper, second-choice centre-backs, took care of Kyogo and Adam Idah with ease. So, Clement has options there, but if he didn't know it before Thursday then he surely knows it now - his five best players in front of the defence are the five he started with at Ibrox. They were driven men, influential from first minute to last.Keep playing them. Build cohesion, establish relationships. Wrap them in cotton wool midweek. Bung them in a cryotherapy chamber, if you have to. But if Rangers are to rescue anything from this season - and if Clement is to save his bacon - the key men have to play. No rest. Rangers' season has been too wicked.
The old heads among the support will be relieved at this sight of what might be at their club, another little peek of better times following good performances in the League Cup final and against Tottenham in Europe.They'll also be mindful that theirs has been a yo-yo existence, optimism followed by despair, followed by glimmers of hope, followed by more frailties. Those false dawns are what brought Clement to the brink on Thursday. One result offers opportunity to grow, that's all.Celtic can't be as comatose again. They'll know that, too. Seeing them so passive for so long was surreal. "They're not robots," Rodgers reminded everybody.The only thing Rodgers can do with this horror show is turn it to his advantage. Use it to remind his players that nothing is won in December - even though everybody keeps telling them that the league is over.He can use the memory of it if he needs it. A hint of complacency and he can unbottle the essence of Ibrox, waft it about and get everybody focused again. If you have to turn in a shocker then do it when you're 14 points ahead in the league. They'll move on, quickly.Where Rangers go next is far more uncertain. Is this a catalyst or a one-off, is Clement trusted now or not? They're away at Hibs and Dundee next, then home to St Johnstone and Aberdeen. All games they should win, but also a game or two you still doubt them in.After the caviar of Thursday, it's the bread and butter they must feast on now.