Sutton& Ferguson
Our favourite Old Firm battle
I WAS lucky to be involved in some pretty dramatic Old Firm epics during my time as a Celtic player but only one is the benchmark – my first one.
I used to love these games but no one will be surprised to discover the famous 6-2 win at Celtic Park was my pick of the bunch.
Talk about a day when everything clicks in to place. Even the sun was shining when we rocked Rangers and got Martin O’Neill’s spell in charge off to a flier.
It was a monumental win but it didn’t mean we’d won the league.
Remember, this was a good Rangers team that had been used to winning and was packed full of quality players.
What it did do though was give us the confidence to believe we could push them all the way and beyond.
It also sent Rangers a strong message – we were a side to fear.
It goes back to that famous line Martin used all that season about Rangers being the benchmark. People always said it was mind games but it was probably the truth.
They had won the league by a mile the previous year under Dick Advocaat and set the standard.
The Rangers squad was packed full of experienced, genuinely top-class players such as Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Stefan Klos, Tugay and so on.
We fancied it though. Myself and Henrik Larsson spoke before the game about going up against Bert Konterman and Lorenzo Amoruso and we wanted to bully them.
The Italian defender had that arrogant swagger about him and we just wanted to wipe that condescending look off his face. It probably wasn’t really the case but that was just our mentality.
It was the same all over the pitch. Both sides had won all of their games at the start of the season and it was billed as a clash of the titans.
We kept our heads down and our mouths shut but there was this quiet confidence in the build up.
No one saw what was coming though. Of course I’d heard all about Old Firm games just like everyone else down south. I knew how much these matches meant to the fans yet it wasn’t something I thought too much about, truth be told.
But the old cliche is true. Nothing really prepares you for this game.
The start that day was unbelievable. Honestly, that was the most intense 15 minutes of football I ever experienced. It was absolutely mental.
The noise was incredible as the goals were flying in. You couldn’t hear yourself think but we were inspired by it.
You could not have asked for better start to any game, let alone an Old Firm derby.
It was enormous for me to hit the net so early in the match but I think most folk and their granny could have put that one away. I’d got off to a decent start at Celtic but, when you arrive for big money, you are expected to do the business when it matters.
In that respect the goal against Rangers took a bit of the pressure off.
But it was more about us as a team laying down a marker. To be three up inside 20-odd minutes certainly did the job.
After that opening spell a lot was made of Martin’s pre-match team talk and he did help get our heads in the game. His mantra was don’t let it pass you by.
He was big on the occasion. He demanded his players step up when it mattered. The good thing about Martin’s reign was he signed a lot of players with character.
You’d look around the dressing room and see a lot of personalities, players who could rise to the big occasion. That was something Rangers were not used to over the previous years.
It was important for us to let them know that in the first derby and Martin got that across beforehand.
But I would argue his half-time talk was even more important. We’d had that sensational start but Rangers got it to 3-1 at the interval.
Don’t get me wrong, we were supremely confident the job was done but if we’d taken our foot off the gas even slightly then things could have radically changed.
That’s the danger against quality opposition but Martin got us focused and we went back out determined to maintain the dominance.
It helped when Henrik scored the best goal I have ever seen. It wasn’t a bad assist either, mind you. Even then you didn’t think it was over until towards the end.
Once the dust settled, it was clear that win gave us a huge foundation for the rest of the season. Yes, Rangers came back and beat us 5-1 at Ibrox next time out but that was the kind of thing that could happen between the sides back then.
We’d already set our stalls out in the 6-2 game at Parkhead. We knew we had a good team, we knew we had a top manager and we knew we could go all the way.
We could also see after that match Rangers were completely shellshocked. They didn’t know what had hit them.
That was the moment they realised there really was a title race – and we were witnessing the start of a new era.