So what did we learn today except that Madden will give you nothing and that Lennon cannot think on the fly enough to make decent changes when we go a man down?
What did we learn today, in short, that we didn’t already know?
How about this? Ismaili Soro has all the hallmarks and characteristics we would look for in our permanent Scott Brown replacement.
He did enough to demonstrate, without question, that we’d be in a far better place right now had he been in the team sooner.
For that you can blame the stubbornness of the manager.
When he is no longer coaching the club we’ll really see the best of the guy.
For now, I’m glad he’s in the team and doing so well. We can watch him develop over the course of the next few months and hopefully nobody at the club gets any stupid ideas about punting him the first time a good offer comes in.
We’ve heard a lot these past few months about how great the Ibrox midfield is.
He made them look very, very ordinary today.
McGregor got the man of the match award; of course he did, that was the Ibrox “thank you” to the guy who kept the score at 0-0 until they got the benefit of the refereeing decision which was coming all day long.
But Soro ran the show.
He was superb from the minute the game started until the minute he went off.
The guys who play in his position are the unsung heroes of many a team; Neil Lennon was excellent in that role and I expect he now understands, watching the player, the magnitude of his own folly in leaving him out as long as he did.
It is no wonder that so many clubs build their entire team around the guys in the engine room.
Those gutsy ball winners who are never got to write headlines because they don’t save penalties and they rarely score goals.
But a good one is the rock entire dynasties have been built on, as Ferguson knew well at Manchester United and as Wegner knew at Arsenal when two of the finest ever – Keane and Viera – were the pivotal players in their teams.
It just so happens, of course, that theirs is the position most vulnerable to refereeing influence because the nature of their game makes it easy for a ref who wants to order the tide of a match to do so simply by issuing a card.
Look how often it used to happen to Scott Brown, early in a game.
Look how often it would happen to Neil Lennon himself when he playing was in the Hoops.
There was never any question that Soro would be one of the first players booked in the match, not for the moment it became clear to all including the ref that he was dictating the pace of the game.
Other than the red card, giving Soro the yellow was the most obvious thing Madden could have done all day, other than denying the one Morelos deserved for as long as he did.
And the player better get used to this, because more than rough treatment from the opposition this is what he has to look forward to in this season and beyond.
Because the better he is, the more they’re going to be coming for him.
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