So, last night I listened to the Graham Spiers podcast, which he put out after the game. He had an Ibrox fan blogger on there, and he had Stephen McGowan as well.
They were having a chat about the match and about Celtic’s record against the Ibrox club in recent years, how impressive that record is, and how far in front of them we now are. The discussion took an interesting turn because the Ibrox fan blogger was in no way confident that things could be put right anytime soon, and I think both McGowan and Spiers agreed that it’s pretty bleak.
One of the things I keep hearing in the aftermath of the game is how Celtic has now made this a routine fixture. There’s no more of a challenge for us to play and beat them than it is for us to play and beat Aberdeen or Hearts or Kilmarnock.
Kilmarnock had a better record against us last season than the Ibrox club did, and Hearts certainly did. Both of those teams beat us last season; Ibrox didn’t beat us once.
There were very specific circumstances in which those defeats came about; the Hearts game, in particular, came as a result of one of the most atrocious refereeing decisions any of us has ever witnessed.
One of the things we talk about a lot as fans right now is “Espanolification.” And we all know that is a thing. We all know that, in some ways, they are the Espanyol to our Barcelona.
But I’ve now had a couple of people refer to the Glasgow Derby as being more akin to the Merseyside Derby.
Well, the Everton fans turn up more in hope than expectation. They know that they may win the occasional game, but it does not make them contenders and it does not put them on the same plane as their much larger, much greater city rivals. In fact, it’s not really a rivalry at all anymore; it’s just a series of odd spectacles, some of which are classics because Everton sneak the odd goal and get the odd victory.
One of the things I’ve talked about several times on this site is about how we might render this “rivalry” redundant. And one of the ways in which we can do that is to render this game irrelevant. And there is some evidence that we are now starting to do that.
Rodgers has a record against them which is unbelievable: 19 games, one defeat, 15 wins, and three draws. That is astonishing. Had Ange not taken his foot off the gas for that final game, the one at Ibrox that gave them such hope going into the last campaign, his own record would be pretty impressive against them too.
Their record at Celtic Park is even more dire than their record overall against Rodgers. They haven’t won a meaningful game against us—one that actually genuinely mattered a damn—since they beat us in the Scottish Cup in Ange’s first season.
So, if you can’t win these games when it matters, if you can’t win meaningful fixtures in these matches, then the Glasgow Derby has lost its lustre. The Glasgow Derby has lost any semblance of importance or being a genuine contest.
Clement has managed five times against us and lost four, drawing one. And the one he drew, they got a late equaliser in order to nick a point, which they celebrated like they had won the title. It shows you how used to losing against us that lot actually are if they can take a moral victory from a match in which we maintained our challenge for the top spot and kept it in our hands.
And that should worry their fans almost as much as anything that they are watching right now. This idea that we now treat this fixture like any other game and that beating them has become a matter of routine. And the farther away from them we move, the more routine those victories will get, and the less relevance the so-called “derby” will have.
And if that goes, they’ve got nothing left, because that’s all they’ve got going on. Their only relevance to the wider world is through the prism of the derby. And if that has been snatched away from them—and we are in the process of doing it—oh, where are they? And what identity do they have for their club? Without Celtic, what would they be?
There are people who say that this kind of dominance is not good for Scottish football. Well, I would stipulate that Bayern Munich enjoyed an equally lengthy spell of dominion over Germany, and it didn’t hurt German football. Juventus had a spell in Italy where they looked like they would never lose a title, and that didn’t hurt Italian football particularly. For a while, PSG looked as if they could win every title in France. You have Manchester City, who look head and shoulders above every club in the Premiership, and that’s supposed to be the most competitive league in Europe. None of those leagues has gone out of business because of one club dominance.
And as the domestic game becomes less important to us in terms of how we see ourselves and where we fit into the bigger picture, European football, of course, becomes more important. Which is why these eight Champions League fixtures that we will play this season are going to be the things this campaign is remembered for.
It certainly is no longer defined by the derby. The derby has become easy. And the more hopeless the Ibrox club gets, the easier it’s going to become, and as it does the more our club’s focus will have to switch to European football and the prospect of a European Super League.
They, as usual, will try desperately to clutch to our coattails and go along for the ride.
But this is where it becomes ever more important that we start charting our own course in Europe and we start winning games again with regularity.
Because we really can leave them all the way behind. We are on the brink now of outgrowing the game here. When we are the last man standing, we will have.
And that’s something that should be focusing minds inside Celtic Park a lot more than it appears to be doing. Our club has spent too long worrying about the future of this fixture and worrying about the future of that hapless side across town.
No more, or at least not for much longer.
We’re about to overtake them in the trophy count, which puts the Survival Lie on borrowed time. But it’s the fixture itself, and the steady erosion of its competitiveness which really might come to matter. That shows where the biggest gulf lies and where their biggest problem for the future is going to be. Not even staying competitive, but staying relevant. And we, over the course of the next couple of years, can completely destroy that.
And I’ll tell you, whether the board wants to or not, I know this manager will not hesitate. As I said yesterday, he is an elite coach, and he is unsentimental and utterly without mercy. He would stick the hosepipe in their mouth and do it with a smile on his face.
I’ve talked about how, in 2012, I wanted there to be no Ibrox club and once I realised that was not in our gift I reconciled myself to some version of them surviving, and I started to think that maybe that wasn’t a bad thing, depending on which state they were in, depending on their condition. And this version of the Ibrox club, which is now emerging finally from years of financial doping and into the harsh realities of living within their means, only spending what they earn, is incapable of challenging Celtic to any long-term degree.
So, this enfeebled version of them, forever biting our ankles from the dirt, is pretty much where I want them and pretty much where it suits us to keep them.
We keep them around the league for the TV money and the sponsorship. But as a serious opposition, as a serious challenge? No, that’s over.
Twelve titles in 13 years makes it clear what the rivalry is worth.
So, Espanolification? Yeah, but that Everton comparison, that Merseyside Derby comparison, is equally promising as a metaphor for where both clubs are.
And perhaps one day this will be just like the Merseyside Derby, completely sanitised, free of even the hatred. That’s an open question about whether or not the permanent sense of Ibrox crisis will start to erode the fan base. And I don’t think that’s as crazy as it sounds; in fact, it’s something I’ve been expecting for about the last dozen years. With respect to them, they have bucked that trend, but they haven’t beaten it.
That may be their future: being the subject of routine beatings and perhaps even an annual humiliation or two just to remind them of what it feels like to genuinely hurt. Because the worst thing that can possibly happen over there is not anger but apathy, because it’s apathy that makes it impossible to sell season tickets. It makes it impossible to sell shirts. It makes it impossible to keep the next generation interested in following the club at all.
And once we’ve reduced this fixture to just another game, that’s what their future becomes; a battle for the next generation, and one they are increasingly doomed in.
I can 100% see as time goes on they’re fan base taking on the same mentalities of the likes of Hearts, Aberdeen etc. As time goes & recent success dwindles they are going to be the same as the others where they don’t particuarly have much recent success so will grasp anything gleefully with both arms.
I know you’re pretty switched on for hearing what’s being said in the media from both sides of the divide James. Just wanted to mention in case you haven’t heard it the absolute embarrassment that is Souness floundering on stats to down play only to have it thrown back in his face by Simon Jordan (who I know you are not a fan of but in this debate he hits the nail on the head). Souness also tries to make the point we spent £28m & they only spent £14. He vaguely acknowledges we have brought good money in too but he doesn’t want to acknowledge we are £10m in the green for the window & 3 or 4 other teams in the league also made a net profit over the window & they had a net loss of more than £10m yet again spending over the odds to hold on as best they can but they all know in the back of their heads & deep in their hearts as you say that this rivalry is not a close one at all.
I’ve also heard there was a caller into the show who was imploring Souness to accept the gap is massive to the point he would have a bet with Souness & would donate to his charity if he loses. The bet… Aberdeen will finish above them this season.
I hope I can find the call so I can have a listen because it sounds hugely entertaining.
We’ve been gubbin, pumpin and embarrassin them ceremoniously over the last 12 years and apart from 2021, they’ve had nothin much domestically. Tho as ye know, strange things can happen in football, with regards tae switches in owners, power, etc. Ah think we should all just enjoy it while it lasts and hopefully thats for a long time yet, because naebody knows what circumstances could develop that change the dynamic. Let’s smash the ibrox myth first and get as many honors in the bag as we can.
Yep – Good point Kevan about smashing the Liebrox myth and getting as many honours in the bag as we can…
While yourself, myself and every other football fan in Scotland bar those of Sevco know that it’s Celtic 118 trophies v Sevco 3 The Pathological Survival Lie adopted by Sevco fans and The Scummy Scottish Football Media Sevco fans tries to spin as ‘fact’ that it’s eachy peachy at 118 each – a pack of deliberate lies of course…
While we all know that the game on Sunday propelled Celtic 24 v 10 ahead in the head to head wins they (Sevco fans and The Scummy Scottish Football Media) are going with 170 v 169 for Celtic…
While we know that’s blatant lies to feed the Survival Myth let us as you say get ahead in the mythological trophy count even though we all know that it’s Celtic 118 v Sevco 3 !!!
An interesting read James. Careful what you wish for however…
A lack of genuine competition domestically doesn’t give us the level of competition that sets us up for success in Europe (…depending on how you measure that – this season probably the round of 16 would be ‘success’?). The last time that a Scottish team won a trophy in Europe was when there were three competitive teams in the top division (and Rangers weren’t one of them!) in the late 70’s/early 80’s – and that was Aberdeen under Alex Ferguson.
Then there is the co-efficient to worry about as well. If the other Scottish teams give up hope, and this in turn makes them poorer and have less chance to qualify for the group stages of European competition, it makes our chances of qualifying harder.
Lastly, it might make lazy football executives (we know the ones!) take their eye off the ball, and less able to cope with change i.e. last time Rogers jumped ship!
Rangers need a 5-10 year plan, Fergus McCann style, and they’ll have to suck up those years of grimness, just like we did when we were sorting the finances out, getting youth football straight and the Hun were cheating financially! We’re reaping the benefits now… they should learn from history at Ibrokes.
In the meantime, I’m not sure this is healthy for us in the long term?
So what you’re saying is Scottish Football needs a strong and competitive SEVCO??? I beg to DIFFER. Scottish Football needs a resurgent ABERDEEN and with Jimmy Thelin as their manager, we may finally get that. Scottish Football didn’t suffer back in the early to mid 1980s when the Premier League was a three horse race between Celtic, Aberdeen and Dundee United with Oldco Rangers nowhere NEAR that race. As my parish priest who is a BIG Celtic fan said to me once: “All this talk of Celtic needing them for the atmosphere and competition is nonsense. We DON’T need them, we don’t need their BIGOTRY and we DON’T need their POISON”. Continued domestic dominance for Celtic will see their Season Ticket and merchandise revenue continue to erode which will lead to one inevitable outcome for Sevco…OBLIVION and I will be gorging on Jelly and Ice CREAM as I was in 2012. Good RIDDANCE to them when the end finally comes.
I think that is what I was implying (competition from other clubs would help in Europe – doesn’t HAVE to be SEVCO) whilst giving a historical solution to improving the Hun.
We’ll see how ‘real’ the Aberdeen improvement is over the course of a season. I would predict 2nd place for them with SEVCO 3rd. Could they cope if their manager left after a couple of seasons though? I’ll give them credit… despite losing Miovski, they have made a profit on their transfer business and still look at good team. Something they could only dream of at Ibrokes!
You can’t seriously be comparing football (and the clubs) in the 80s to now? The financial gap between now and then is bigger than the Valles Marineris. In the 80s even in the English League provincial teams like Villa, Ipswich, Everton & Notts Forrest were winning trophies regularly and at one point the Div 1 (as it was then) the runners up in four consecutive years were Ipswich twice, Watford and Southampton!! The days of such clubs competing for league titles IS OVER PERMANENTLY due to the finances of the game (more’s the pity). If there’s no competitive Rangers there literally is no competition for us. IF Aberdeen put up a decent fight for the league over the next couple of years (and I’d bet my house they even don’t finish within 15points of us) then what do you think we will happen? We’ll simply buy their best players and probably appoint Thelin as our next manager – if he hasn’t already moved down south!
Aberdeen have 10k season tickets – we have 55k (Rangers have 45k) – how on earth can they compete with us. Whether we like or not Rangers are the only Scottish club that can ever compete with us and if it turns out they are the Everton to our Liverpool then Yorkshire Bhoy is right – all that will happen is OUR level will drop. We need Rangers to be as strong as possible to push us to be the best we can be – ideally not quite good enough to beat us when it matters 😉
Some interesting points Woodyiom…
One I’d vehemently disagree with you in is your constant use of the word ‘Rangers’ of which both myself and many Celtic Supporters refer to as Sevco in their 12 year and 36 day old history – Using description that you do only perpetrates The Pathological Survival Lie and plays right into the hands of The Scummy Scottish Football Media…
Yes – Of course competition is always healthy for Celtic and in all walks of life as well – However we all know that any competition that’d come the way from Sevco would be of the utmost dishonesty and that as an honest Celtic supporter is something that I cannot and will not ever accept – well will not accept contributing financially to it By way of payment through a Parkhead turnstile any more…
I still hurt that I payed towards a bent and corrupt football competition in The Bent and Corrupt Banana Republic that is Scottish Football (The Premier League) !
I look back with fondness Yorkshire Bhoy to the 80’s decade (my first decade as a football fan) where it was ultra competitive – but ultra competitive in an HONEST manner…
Bloody Hell – I don’t think Celtic ever won v Dundee United at Tannadice in all ma years at high school !
But as I say United beat us very FAIRLY and Squarely…
There is no doubt that the first decade after The Millennium was an arms race of competitiveness between Celtic and Rangers (as they were correctly known as then) but while our ‘war chest’ to meet the challenge was funded honestly there’s was abundantly not – They were Cheats to the core then before they died in disgrace, They are cheats to the core now under the guise of their bastard child Sevco – And they’ll be cheats to the core eternally either as Sevco or whatever doppelgänger name they’ll come under…
I like yourself welcome competition in The SPFL Premier League – But it has to be HONEST competition and that simply will never ever be forthcoming from Sevco Football Club !
Aye agreed… no financial cheating!
McCann did it right. You need to learn to pay your way from the off. It was painful, but you earn the trust.
SEVCO are tarnished with Oldco attitude and financial practices, and until they learn to do it right there is no way back.
As I say, it’s painful, but it’s the only way!
They are the Govan Geldings, caponised and raging about their helplessness and hopelessness.
Titter ye not!
You missed out castrated and emasculated.
As they should have been, metaphorically speaking, in 2012.
The SFA & SPFL caved intotheir base instincts in seeking to preserve
them in any form.
All the talk of ‘Social Unrest’ if Rangers were not admitted
to the ‘Top Table’ should have been met head on by Civic Scotland as a threat to
the wider Scottish Society. In fact it was a challenge to the rule of Law in a democratic country and should have been treated as such by our Civic and National Politicians.
But Scotland being (Masonic) Scotland that was never going to happen.
Fast forward 12 years ….their worst nightmare is now here all because the threat of violence was caved into by their friends in high places. Certain justice in that perhaps.
Hell mend them.
Hello James, You know why I don’t like reading and hearing this kind of stuff from our supporters? It stinks of the same kind of arrogance spouted from the followers of a club on the other side of the City 30 years ago. They were bringing in genuine talent and we got Stuart Slater. You just can’t predict what’s going to happen further down the road. Someone with a bit of business savvy and lots of dosh could roll up and completely turn that lot around. Likewise, complacency can be very dangerous, and it’s my opinion that our bean counters reckon that lot to be vital to their business model and don’t want to build too big a lead. Having said that, I hope you’re right. Cheers, Brian.
In the 18th Century one Rev Robert Malthus suggested that an increase in population was good as it would lead to more food production but warned, if not controlled, that eventually the former would expand beyond the latter’s ability to feed it and so cause problems.
It might be a stretch to suggest there is a similarity to the situation in the media where every commentator is a Sevco supporter. They in turn interview former Sevco and Rangers ex-managers and players.
Think of the poor man that takes over the Sevco management and faced with all these opinions shoved in his face and every move scrutinised by, it has to be said, people who have failed at management themselves, such as Souness ( any success was the result of cheating), Ferguson etc.
The overload is counterproductive, a la Malthus, and I believe, Souness,( why is he even here?) warning that stirring up the fans is actually helping Celtic.
The Sevco/Rangers pollution of the media can only make matters worse.
Long may it continue.
Meant to say, I believe it’s already too late for them: there is no way out.
Frankly, we don’t need them, whether it upsets some of our more timorous supporters or not.
Aberdeen look like they might present more of a challenge.
Their manager looks like he knows what he’s doing, unlike Phleep Phlop, who appears to be there for the long term, given his new contract, which would cost them a lot to terminate.
Tony, should they decide against him they will just “resign” him like they did Warburton who hilariously was informed by the media that he had packed it in.
Wonder if he ever got his money? Few do.
Interesting article. I have a few pals who attend ibrox occasionally and they. to a man, are sick of the ‘Fenian blood brigade’ over there. They want to watch football, not relive battles from over 300 years ago. 2 of the 5 are married to Catholics and are seriously thinking of chucking it because of the anti catholic and anti Irish singing. They just wouldn’t go to football anymore.
Interesting post Bunter – Some of them around these shores are just in it for the football as well, they’d help you if you needed it, maybe borrow a rip saw, give you a lift if you were hitching on the road, equally of course we’d do the exact same for them as well…
Of course there the odd arrogant ones for whom I am their absolute WORST nightmare…
I know all the records in Scottish Football and CELTIC HAVE THEM thankfully !
And I’m not backward at coming forward to perpetually remind them of these said records either for sure…
I can get away with it here, but not sure I’d be challenging or correcting their myths, Pathological Lies and fabrication in say pubs in Bridgeton or Ayrshire though !
Yeah but last week they had their best result in 4 year’s apparently. I think the manager is also bringing them down a notch. He does not have the capacity to be at a club with sky high and often unreal expectations. Out of his depth, just keeping the seat warm for Del, a real rangers man 🙂 Rinse repeat.
It’s been broken down many times on this blog where the fundamental reasoning why they will never progress and it’s all down to themselves and the Klanbase pushing the Elitist, we are the peepul, rangers didn’t die, Other people have hurt rangers (Whyte, Green, Mike, Le Guen, bread man, caixheina, GVB, Now Beale), self serving expectancy. When in reality it is all themselves to blame here. Board, players and fans.
Lack of leadership, board room politics, inept leadership in contracts etc, selfish men leading the company looking after themselves ultimately, Murray, King, Chuckles etc. Until they get over the Kulchur and tradition they will be in the 1700’s forever.
I heard the Everton analogy last night also, can’t disagree, maybe Tranmere rovers would be a better choice.
I feel there is a brick wall coming for them. They can’t afford to let the coaching staff got and hire another. They have to work with what they have.
I feel that if Clemente gets them to second spot at the end of the season he will mark that as a triumph. Maybe open top bus thru Govan. Probably sums up your theme today James.
Let me leave you with this… The biggest positive in rangers season could be the board providing the klan with the seats they were promised and paid for at the start of the season.
Dave King jetting in yet? The Boats arrived from the east yet?
They might struggle to sell season tickets James, but as long as they have the colour orange on their merchandise they will still sell that sort shabby tat. SOB’S.
Consider this, now with two quality players for every position do we now have the best two teams in Scotland?
When we play the huns at Hampden or Castle Greyskull in January we should play in one of our away strips to show them it’s just another game.
I’ve always thought that Celtic’s future will be competing in a European & Global setting. This is likely to happen much sooner than we think. There is one benefit from the Espanolification of theRanjurz & that is the good people of Scotland will no longer have to put up with the bigotry & 17th century attitudes of neanderthals.