LENNONv GERRARD
It’s Nine or never as Celtic and Rangers gear up for a title battle in what promises to be another pulsating season
FOR football writers, pre-season predictions are a curse. Journalism’s version of the hangman’s noose.
No-one lays claim to the wisdom or predictive powers of Nostradamus. Yet once a year there’s a request from the Head of Sport to ponder the great imponderables of the Scottish game. To make big calls in print in the knowledge that, nine months from now, online types will produce screenshots proving beyond all reasonable doubt stupidity, bias or both.
This is how it goes in a Nine-ina-row season; a campaign when bitterness, paranoia and suspicion will reach Defcon 1.
It hasn’t been like this for much of the last eight years. The identity of the champions at the end of the season has been pretty much a given.
Last summer one or two in the ink trade plumped for Rangers in pre-season. And they’ve been reminded of that by Celtic fans every day since. Tipping the Parkhead side is the safest bet based on the evidence of recent years and another winning margin last season of nine points.
Yet with every passing year a little more uncertainty creeps in. Inevitably, Celtic won’t maintain the standards of a treble Treble. No team can.
Even with Brendan Rodgers gone, Neil Lennon back at the helm, uncertainty over the future of Kieran Tierney, Callum McGregor and a new Israeli right-back who has spent recent months playing centre-half, Celtic will be most people’s tip to win the league on the basis that a fit Ryan Christie and Leigh Griffiths makes them better than they were as they
stumbled their way towards Eight-in-a-row.
But is it the given of, say, two or three years ago? Well, no, it isn’t.
Rangers have signed seven new players. Jake Hastie, Greg Stewart and Jordan Jones might lack the quality needed to guarantee a solid challenge to Celtic. But the capture of Joe Aribo, Sheyi Ojo and £3million defender Filip Helander has raised eyebrows and adds something. The anticipated departure of Alfredo Morelos, meanwhile, has not yet materialised.
For Ojo to claim that Rangers are better than Celtic is unwise at this point. The Ibrox side have had a good pre-season, recording six wins and a draw across four friendlies and three Europa League ties, scoring 23 goals and conceding just one. The problem is that nothing is won in pre-season and it’s not enough to they are better than Celtic.
The pressure to halt the Parkhead side’s dominance will be immense this season and Rangers have to prove they can deal with that. Twice in Scottish football history, the two Glasgow giants have won eight straight titles. On both occasions they went on to win the ninth because, when push came to shove, they knew how to win. The crushing, pervasive task of stopping them was too much for their opponents to withstand. So the really big question surrounding Rangers is this. What would constitute success this season? Losing a ninth straight title to Neil Lennon’s Celtic might be too much for some supporters to bear. But what if Steven Gerrard’s side win one or both of the other domestic trophies and take the title race to the final weeks? Might that be enough to constitute continued progress? To do that, Rangers have to improve their record against Aberdeen and Kilmarnock. Too often last season they played fine against Celtic and failed to turn up against so-called ‘lesser’ opponents. No team did more to
unhinge the side’s first term under gerrard than Derek McInnes’ aberdeen.
Last season the Dons played Rangers seven times and lost just twice. They beat them in the Betfred Cup semi-final and eliminated them from the scottish Cup after a replay. In the league, they drew one and won one.
They were pipped for third by Kilmarnock on goal difference, but the Rugby Park side no longer have steve Clarke at the helm. Like the Dons, Killie were a thorn in Rangers’ side, losing just two of their six meetings in league and cup.
Yet the appointment of angelo alessio began with the embarrassing europa League exit to Connah’s Quay nomads, while whispers of player unrest with the Italian proliferate. Forget any nonsense about ‘xenophobia’, scrutiny of the new man hinges on the fact that, under Clarke, Killie were a bloody hard team to beat. When he left to manage scotland, the club board could have found a manager with a similar skillset. Instead they picked a coach with minimal experience as a no1 and little or no knowledge of the scottish game. alessio has sought to turn a winning formula upside down by playing expansive football when he doesn’t have the players to do it.
none of which suggests Kilmarnock will finish third again this season.
Despite losing captain graeme shinnie, McInnes has signed a new contract and brought in Craig Bryson, James Wilson, ash Taylor and Funso Ojo. even this early, aberdeen look the best of the rest.
Hibs are entitled to disagree. Under Paul Heckingbottom, they made pleasing progress and the addition of scott allan and Josh Vela makes them solid favourites for fourth ahead of a Hearts side continuing to under-perform.
Whispers of Craig Levein going back upstairs failed to solidify over the summer. Many more performances like the Betfred Cup draw with east Fife on saturday and it might not take long. The top six should be completed by a young Motherwell side making steady, measured progress under stephen Robinson. as always, the relegation zone will be densely packed and intense. Hamilton accies and st Johnstone usually find a way to stay out of trouble. Yet the loss of Craig Halkett, Declan gallagher, Liam Kelly and Ryan Hardie has ripped the spine from gary Holt’s Livingston, while Jim goodwin has inherited a huge rebuilding job at a st Mirren side unable to beat east Kilbride or albion Rovers in the Betfred Cup. Of course, predictions offer managers something to rip out and pin on the dressing room wall. The annual proof, if it were needed, that only an idiot would try to predict events nine months in advance. Here goes then. Celtic to pip Rangers narrowly to the title, st Mirren for the drop.