ENTRENCHED & EMBITTERED
Old Firm have missed big chance to resolve their mutual contempt
The 24-hour surveillance unit within the Celtic support will tell you Ange Postecoglou is scrutinised more intensely than his counterpart Steven Gerrard at Ibrox.
It’s all paranoid nonsense, of course, knee-jerk claptrap like last weekend’s banner inside the ground denouncing the “evil eyes” of the man soon to become Celtic’s security advisor.
What are they putting inside the Bovril in the kiosks at Celtic Park?
Gerrard has this season cut a more irritable, and therefore publicised, figure than has previously been the case.
I’m not a behavioural psychologist, mate, but he arrived in this country three years ago dripping in European glory and oozing the iconic air of a global personality with a stellar playing career behind him.
Now we’ve got him a master of mood swings and contradictory statements like the rest of us.
After drawing their Europa League tie with Brondby, a team of self- harm specialists in defence, on Thursday night, the Rangers manager criticised himself for his team selection up front then, in the next breath, claimed the players had let him down in Denmark.
One of those observations is correct. It can’t be both.
This follows on from Gerrard saying a few weeks ago that Alfredo Morelos’ goal-to-game ratio wasn’t good enough.
Now it’s even poorer than it was when he first brought up the subject and the manager has subbed him after failing to score in Rangers’ last two games.
Gerrard’s obvious anger with his team’s display against Brondby might have been caused by having had prior warning of the club’s latest published accounts.
They are breathtakingly poor and underline the Ibrox hierarchy having gambled everything on winning the title this season and pocketing rescue funds from automatic entry to the Champions League group stage.
But, sooner or later, Rangers will have to play the player trading game for greater financial sustainability.
They’ve missed the boat with Morelos. There was a time he was worth big money but not now. And when clubs see the extent of Rangers’ indebtedness they’ll be a cynical shade of reluctant to offer as much as they once might have. All of this will get under the skin of a manager who has already drawn attention to having had nothing to spend in the last two transfer windows.
Still, Rangers have a chance of Europa League progression on the back of what will be a blood-curdling game against Sparta Prague at Ibrox.
If rancour and resentment over racism issues are worth anything, they should be the catalyst for victory.
It will be the Europa Conference League for Celtic on the basis that only a super optimist would see them getting anything f rom a visit to Bayer Leverkusen after the Germans took four off Real Betis on Thursday. The same Real Betis who took four off Celtic earlier in the group stage. There’s a distance between ability and capability and Celtic, while being a delight to watch going forward, have lost more goals in four Europa ties than they have in 12 domestic league matches.
It’s all about distance. Today, the Old Firm will be separated by the 90- odd miles between Glasgow and Dundee. That’s geography.
The clubs will, until further notice, be separated by their thinly- disguised contempt for each other.
That’s history.
Entrenched and embittered, what a chance they’ve passed up for one of them to be the bigger man and, in so doing, honour the memory of the man whose funeral took place on Wednesday.
You can have a Celtic shirt tied to the gates of Ibrox beside Rangers jerseys as a mark of respect for Walter Smith.
You can have the indelible memory of that Rangers manager carrying the body of a Celtic legend, Tommy Burns, into a church for his Requiem Mass.
But you can’t have the two sets of supporters occupying the same stadium on the same day their clubs play each other.
That can’t be right and it also can’t be too late for the pair of them to examine their consciences and end the dubious practice of refusing entry to rival fans on Old Firm derby day.
Or do they see some kind of warped virtue in withdrawing into themselves and having nothing whatsoever to do with the other lot?
If they do then it beats me what the virtue looks like and stands for.