Celtic’s “two teams” is a reminder that we’re the club Murray once dreamed Rangers would be.

Today, Michael Gannon put up a piece in The Daily Record about Celtic’s depth, saying how we can change the starting eleven for every game and rotate between two full squads. He’s late to the party here, as I wrote about this over a month ago. Still, it’s nice to see the mainstream press catching on, as if they’ve just realised this is a thing.

An interesting bit of ancient history was mentioned. The former Rangers chairman, David Murray, once boasted about having three separate teams—one for Europe, one for the league, and one for the cups. As with everything else from Murray, it was prideful, arrogant, egotistic rubbish, and very swiftly proven to be exactly that by Martin O’Neill’s Celtic team.

But there’s more about that Ibrox side worth recalling; it was built almost entirely on a tax scam. Apart from not being as good as they thought, it was constructed on the foundation of the initial EBT scams, which led directly to the eventual collapse of that club. Ibrox remembers its past, but it refuses to learn from it.

Everyone who lived through that era remembers what it was like. We remember the way the media used to fawn over Murray, amplifying his bombastic claims, no matter how ridiculous. Nobody ever asked how a club playing in Scotland could afford three separate squads. It just wasn’t important to them, even though it was obvious it couldn’t possibly last.

But for their fans, those were the glory days.

They were high on their own supply, convinced their club would go on another long run of titles and continue to dominate the game for decades. Only a few of us who could crunch the numbers, and who understood that the global credit crunch and housing collapse were going to hit people hard, could foresee how swiftly and completely it would all end.

Even in those few years before the real consequences of the global financial crisis kicked in, it was obvious that something had to give at Ibrox. Murray himself stepped back from the day-to-day running of the club at one point.

And then he pulled one last switcheroo, moving £50 million of debt out of the club and absorbing it into the broader debt of Murray International Holdings, which was already in hock to the bank by astronomical sums. But money was easy to come by back then, and the bank was willing to give unlimited lines of credit to a handful of special clients, Murray included.

It was clear that this spending spree couldn’t go on forever, and Murray knew it himself. That’s why the EBT scheme had already been launched behind the scenes, allowing them to sign players they couldn’t otherwise have afforded. He pushed that club to even greater financial excess, paying £12 million for Tore André Flo as his answer to our £6 million purchase of Chris Sutton. He famously promised that for every £5 we spent, Rangers would spend £10. That it was a move born of utter financial insanity didn’t matter.

This was a grand game for Murray, who was playing with what he saw as monopoly money. None of it was real, and he never expected the bank would one day call in its debts. It was all about ego—his anger over Celtic stopping 10 in a row and his hatred for Martin O’Neill, which is well-documented. Added to that, Fergus McCann had already re-established Celtic as the biggest club in the country, with the largest stadium and the highest income. Not that you’d know it from the media coverage at the time, which was virtually non-existent.

And there’s something else worth noting, something seldom talked about. But I can tell you it was discussed frequently inside Ibrox and even more inside Murray’s Edinburgh offices. Fergus had gone, and a year before McCann departed, Murray made one of his more ridiculous boasts—that his club would be ready for whoever stepped into Fergus’s shoes.

“Whoever takes over at Celtic,” he said, “had better have very deep pockets.” Imagine his surprise when the person who stepped up next was Dermot Desmond, a man with deeper pockets than Murray could have ever dreamed about. Desmond brought in others too, genuine titans of Irish finance, who transformed the way Murray looked at us.

Murray looked across at Celtic’s new financial backers and saw his worst nightmare come true. He didn’t know these men were committed to building something sustainable, rather than throwing money around. He saw them as potential sugar daddies, and it terrified him.

Then disaster struck. The global financial crisis erupted, hitting the banking and real estate sectors. This led to further issues for raw materials markets, already under strain as countries like Poland joined the European Union and produced goods far more cheaply than Murray’s companies could manage. Suddenly, he was caught in a vice.

At some point, the bank stopped lending, refused further debt reshuffling, and Murray’s luck finally ran out. The bank itself was then bought by Lloyds in a deal brokered by none other than Gordon Brown. Very shortly after, Lloyds appointed Donald Muir to the board, who began winding down the debt, and Walter Smith confirmed to the media that the bank was running Rangers.

It was futile. The bank started pressuring Murray to sell to recover the last of their £14 million. They arranged the sale to Craig Whyte on the condition that he cleared the debt, which he did by mortgaging season tickets. This, of course, deprived the club of the funds needed to run it through the season. The rest is history.

Almost all of this traces back to Murray’s boasts about having three teams. In the end, O’Neill’s team was better than any of them, and the decline of the Ibrox club had begun.

Now, Celtic has two squads on the books, capable of fielding two entirely different starting elevens in the same week. Both lineups are strong and sustainable. We don’t need to take on massive debts, nor do we engage in tax scams. We’ve essentially been doing this for years now.

Since this Ibrox club clawed its way out of the Rangers grave and back to the top flight, our success has been without precedent in the history of the game here. We are the club Murray dreamed his side would be. And of all the things that must sting for the fans across the city, this one fact—standing head and shoulders above all the rest—must haunt them.