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There was a time, more than one era, when Celtic were so dominant in Scottish football that all they could see in their rearview mirror was their own dust. Trophies galore, blows from his friends in Glasgow, years of jokes.
Perhaps some thought those days would last forever. The club is now disillusioned with that notion with each passing week.
Everything has changed in the blink of an eye. Now it is the Rangers who are so clear that they cannot choose Celtic no matter how much they look behind them. They don’t need binoculars, it’s a telescope. Nineteen points is the advantage and there can hardly be a soul left who does not believe that the Premiership title is going anywhere other than Ibrox.
After the last derby, Neil Lennon was clinging to controversy like a man looking for a raft. Sixty-three minutes into the game, Nir Bitton rugby dropped Alfredo Morelos to the ground from the left, a desperate act that would not have been out of place if the great Jonny Gray had done it at Murrayfield.
“Denying an obvious scoring opportunity,” concluded referee Bobby Madden as he sent off Bitton. ‘Trash’ Lennon said as he argued an injustice.
The Celtic coach felt that Madden “made us” but it was a convenient shot. Theft, it wasn’t. Lennon could have been better looking at the shortcomings of his own players at the time.
Bitton’s poor decision making was almost like Celtic’s season in the microcosm. Too many wrong moves on and off the field.
James Tavernier hit a hopeful ball onto the field and that simple punt sparked a crisis on Celtic terrain. From his position in soccer in no man’s land, too far from the park and not hard-working enough to retreat, Diego Laxalt watched the ball float over his head to where Bitton faced Morelos.
The central made a show of himself. He didn’t need to do what he did, he didn’t need to put himself in such danger. Had he let Morelos go, the forward would still have had a great deal of work to do, still a huge job on his hands to score.
Most likely, he would have shot on target, hence Madden’s verdict, but scoring from that angle would have been a trick that only the most prominent scorers would have been able to pull off.
If Bitton had been thinking like a diligent defender, he had been on the forward’s right side in the first place. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have let him run instead of knocking him down and creating trouble for his team. His head went off at a critical moment, and so did the game.
‘The mounting sleeve for Celtic is the pursuit of mug’
From relying on the excellence of Allan McGregor to keep them in the game, the Rangers won it with the unwitting help of their namesake, Callum, deflecting a header toward his own goal. Riding a case for Celtic in the league is now a cup game. Even if they win all three of their games in the hand, they would still be left behind by 10 points, they would still need the Rangers to start losing games when all they’ve done so far in the Premiership, pretty much, is win.
There are 22 games and 20 wins. He has scored 57 goals and conceded only five. Celtic have had two chances, at home and away, and have failed to score, much less win. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that this Rangers team will collapse.
For much of the season, they have done it all in their own way, their inflexible defense, their organized and energetic midfield, their dangerous and goal-laden attack. None of these things really applied on Saturday. They had to show another side of themselves. McGregor hasn’t been called up to win league games this season, but this was his stage.
Here was a new challenge for the Rangers. It was the first time they had been beaten for such a long period in the league this season, the first time a team had put them under that kind of stress for a full 45 minutes.
Those early stops frustrated Celtic, who played hard for an hour. They needed a goal, they needed to prove to themselves that they had the beating of their rivals and only one goal was going to give them that comfort.
And it never came. Odsonne Edouard and Leigh Griffiths were rejected by the goalkeeper.
Things flared with the red card. Seven minutes later, the Rangers went ahead and everything sold out from there.
Lennon may complain about the red, but his team’s tribulations this season did not begin with a referee decision. If Bitton didn’t acknowledge the danger he was in when he brought down Morelos, that’s in keeping with the club’s performance in failing to acknowledge that its neighbors across town were no longer the soft touches of before. Celtic never saw this revival coming.
They have spent money, but wrong. They have changed goalkeepers, changed centers, changed formations, rotated, recycled, but the mistakes keep repeating. Bitton’s mistake was just the latest in a long series of counterproductive events, the kind of things the Rangers used to do so often in their gloomy years.
Gerrard on the edge of history
At full time, Steven Gerrard showed no emotion on the touchline. If he hadn’t known the score, he would have had no idea whether he had won or lost.
Even when the action ended, he seemed focused. That guy of steel is now on your team. They have developed a habit of finding a way to win, be it a ride or a fight.
The work you are doing is hurtling toward the historical. Considering what he inherited, we are seeing a big change in Ibrox, from scatter to intentional.
Rangers finished third in the league in the season prior to his arrival. In the previous years, they built a large cash tower and set it on fire in the transfer market. His recruiting and strategy were so bad that it could have been done by Celtic CEO Peter Lawwell in disguise.
You had to sort out so many things and spend so much money, but wisely. They have done that.
At a window, he brought McGregor, Borna Barisic, Connor Goldson, and Ryan Kent. In another, it was Steven Davis, Jermain Defoe and Glen Kamara. Others have come and most of the major decisions have worked.
Over £ 30 million have been spent on players. A huge sum. Losses on the last two sets of accounts amounted to £ 27 million. They have advanced thanks to soft loans and cash from equity deals with supporting directors.
But there is a plan there, and the irritating thing for Celtic is that it is a plan that they have taken from them, as well as the title itself, perhaps. Seek value, enhance it, and sell it. That was the way Celtic was in their best nine-in-a-row years. Now he has become the template desired by his rivals.
It is not known where Celtic will go in terms of management and players. It looks like a club in need of revitalization on many fronts.
Where the Rangers are headed seems safer. Gerrard won’t get involved in the title talk until the job is done. He knows more than anyone how ruinous delays can be. However, Saturday was a seismic moment for him. He didn’t show it, but he must have felt it.
