This is an education for Mark but he has to show he is learning the lessons
SAYS ALEX MCLEISH
FOR Mark Warburton, his first taste of an Old Firm league encounter proved a bruising and quite bewildering affair. Having sampled the dizzying high of a William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final victory over Celtic on penalties at Hampden in April, a 5-1 demolition derby at Parkhead five months later sent the Rangers manager crashing back down to earth with an almighty thump.
Now, as Celtic and Rangers prepare to do battle again in the Betfred Cup semi-final this Sunday, former Ibrox boss Alex McLeish believes the Englishman must now show how much stronger he is for that Old Firm ordeal and the criticism it brought.
‘Mark Warburton obviously wasn’t anticipating the backlash from that last game,’ said McLeish, speaking on behalf of BT Sport.
‘These are new things in his coaching career and it’s an education. Not only was the game an education for him, but so was the Press that he got afterwards and he has had to learn to deal with it.
‘But time, they say, is a healer. And the thing now for Mark Warburton is to show how much he has learned from that experience.
‘I think he will have watched the game back a few times since and he will have learned a few things from it.
‘I would imagine it will be much closer on Sunday than it was at Celtic Park.’
Since that 5-1 loss to Celtic, Rangers have won three, and drawn once, with the muchcriticised Ibrox backline keeping four clean sheets in the process. The only blot on the landscape has been a 2-1 defeat at Aberdeen.
But the contrasting fortunes could not be starker from the last time these teams met at Hampden with Rangers the victors against Ronny Deila’s insipid Celtic.
Under former Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers, the Scottish champions have dropped just two points all season and recently held Manchester City’s multimillionaires to a fine 3-3 draw in the Champions League.
Warburton’s plan B is famously to do plan A better, but McLeish (right) believes a rare change of formation away from the Ibrox boss’ tried-and-trusted 4-3-3 shape could just be in order this weekend.
‘Things have changed since April,’ nodded the former Scotland manager. ‘Celtic’s momentum and confidence is much more advanced than it was when the teams met in the Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden.
‘Back then, Rangers had great momentum. They didn’t go in as favourites, but they did go into it with massive confidence. This time around, it is different.
‘Mark Warburton has his side playing great, open football, but maybe he will be a bit more cautious in this semi-final.
‘It’s harder at Hampden with the big, open spaces. I watched Hibs in the Scottish Cup Final against Rangers and they went three at the back.
‘The midfielders were like old inside-lefts and inside-rights and they gave the defence a lot of protection.
‘You never know, but Mark may be looking at those tactics. If he played three at the back, would that be strange? I don’t know. ‘It is just a theory. But he has to change things (after losing 5-1) and he will have scrutinised the last Celtic game. ‘Whether he has got a tactical surprise for us, we will see.’ McLeish is as bemused as the rest of Scottish football that Joey Barton’s future has still not been ironed out. But he feels Rangers have found better balance in the engine room during the former Newcastle and Manchester City midfielder’s club-imposed suspension. ‘I don’t know what is happening inside the club, but the fact that it’s rumbled on for so long without being resolved one way or another is a little bit baffling,’ he said.
‘People are saying that he’ll never play for Rangers again, but we’ve heard nothing from inside Ibrox to say that, so that remains to be seen.
‘Right now, it’s just speculation, and until we do hear something, Mark has got to focus on the players he does have in the team.
‘I saw Joey Barton playing last year for Burnley and they had a good balance between attack and defence.
‘But when I saw the Celtic game, Joey was getting exposed by Celtic’s counter-attacks and the Rangers players were a bit spread out.
‘That wasn’t happening at Burnley in the English Championship.
‘But what Rangers have done in the last few weeks is get an understanding with the players in midfield with Niko Kranjcar, Andy Halliday and Jason Holt.
‘Now Mark has got to find a way of beating Celtic and he has to stop Celtic’s threats.
‘That will be as big a part of his game plan as the attacking threat of his own team.’
BT Sport is your home of live football for the UEFA Champions League, SPFL and Betfred League Cup. Watch Celtic v Borussia Mönchengladbach in the UEFA Champions League exclusively live on BT Sport ESPN tomorrow from 7pm.