Thisischance forIbroxmen toshowthey reallydogetit
David McCarthy
ONE of the many accusations thrown at the Rangers team pieced together by Mark Warburton is that too many of the players simply don’t “get it”.
It was certainly one of the jibes that irritated the former boss when it was said he didn’t understand what it meant to be manager at Ibrox.
He railed against the notion and you suspect plenty of his players also hate being told that they don’t know what it means to play for a club of that stature and the weight of expectation that comes with it.
Well, on Sunday they’ve got the chance to prove the doubters wrong and how they react to that opportunity will tell us all we need to know about their mentality. And whether they “get it” or not.
On the face of it, they are heading to Parkhead to get walloped. They’ve already lost there 5-1 this season. They’ve also lost to Celtic at Hampden and Ibrox. In fact, the only place in Glasgow where Celtic haven’t stuffed them is Firhill.
They are facing a team that has swept everything Scotland has to offer aside with ease. Brendan Rodgers’s team is eyeing a Treble and a recordbreaking league-winning margin.
They’ve proved invincible domestically and have a striker in their ranks, Moussa Dembele, who has scored five times in three Old Firm matches.
So a team that doesn’t “get it” would travel across the city thinking this was just another three points and if Celtic win, it’s to be expected so it’s no big deal.
But if they want their fans to know that they do “get it” – that they understand what it means to play for Rangers – they’ll be hell-bent on doing everything they can to win. Here’s why. You just can’t meekly accept your fate in this fixture. No matter which side you play for.
Watching Celtic disappear over the horizon is hard enough for Rangers fans but they accept the reality of the situation. Their rivals are miles in front, financially and football-wise and there’s not a Rangers supporter who doesn’t understand that.
That doesn’t mean they have to like it. They certainly don’t like the idea of Celtic motoring through the season unbeaten and winning a Treble.
But this Rangers team has the chance to do something about that. They’ve got three games left against Celtic this season and if they can’t rely on others ripping Celtic’s cloak of invincibility from their shoulders, they’ve got three chances to do it themselves. If they don’t and they lose these three games, they’ll be forever remembered as the players who lost six games in one season to Celtic. Walter Smith always said the fear of failure was the driving force behind his Rangers teams, not the desire to win. Well, this side will be branded failures forever if they lose all six games to Celtic. If they ‘get it’, they’ll know that. At Hampden next month, they’ll have a chance to prevent the Treble by repeating last season’s Scottish Cup semi-final success. That match changed everything – it shook Celtic’s directors out of their comfort zone and made them realise they needed a topclass manager to head what looked like a resurgent Rangers off at the pass. It’s fair to say they’ve succeeded.
And there will be one last meeting between the clubs at Ibrox after the split and almost certainly after Celtic have clinched the title.
But first up is the biggest test of this team’s character.
They’ve gone to Tynecastle twice, Pittodrie, Dens, Inverness and lost. They’ve already had a Celtic Park mauling.
They’ll be stepping into a cauldron where 53,000 of the 60,000 will be demanding their team hands out another hammering. It’s going to take something special for these Rangers players to perform against a team with so many better players and flowing with confidence.
James Tavernier, Clint Hill, Rob Kiernan (if he wins his appeal), Josh Windass, Harry Forrester, Martyn Waghorn, Emerson Hyndman and Jon Toral can say they “get it”.
On Sunday, they have to prove it. If they go into that match thinking there’s nothing to lose because they’re expected to lose, they don’t get it.
As for Celtic, their players will want to ram their superiority down Rangers’ throats. If they get in front early, they’ll want to deliver a beating so severe their rivals will be hurting for years.
There will be none of the League Cup semi-final nonsense from a few years ago when Ronny Deila’s team went 2-0 up early on and then took their feet off the gas. That was a sign that Deila didn’t “get it” because a Celtic boss who did would have gone for the jugular.
It’s what fans demand – there’s no such thing as a meaningless Old Firm game. It means too much to too many people.
SPORTS VIEW WEDNESDAY This side will be branded failures forever if they lose all six games