One win over Celtic hasn’t turned this Ibrox team into world beaters, yet you would think it had.

There was a grim inevitability about Thursday’s defeat and it wasn’t the result itself, which came as a big shock to most of us.

No, it was this; if we were going to lose, it was bound to be some of the players we’ve all rightly slated who’d emerge as Ibrox’s so-called heroes.

Hagi has been widely slated. So, does he score? Of course, he does. Robin Propper gets a goal. Of course, he does. The backline barely has a thing to do. And Raskin grabs two assists. Of course, he does. Sometimes, the football gods just laugh at you.

I love the media’s coverage of these guys. The praise Raskin, Hagi, and Propper are getting is almost comical.

None of these players would make it into our team.

I’ve marvelled for weeks at the media’s love affair with the Romanian, Hagi. It’s had no obvious basis in reality for me. He’s one of those players who has one good game in a dozen. The truth is simple: we made him look good, just as we made several of his teammates look good.

But let’s address what we already know—they aren’t a good side. A truly good side would have at least one player capable of getting into our squad. It’s ludicrous to suggest their team is on par with ours just because they managed to win one football match. Yet, if you’ve seen some of the media coverage, it’s hysterical. You’d think we’re facing a footballing juggernaut.

How many more times do these people need reminding of their status? As I said in my match report after their defeat to St Mirren, all we have to do is be patient and wait for the inevitable implosion. That’s all we need to do here: sit, watch, and wait. Because it will happen. This isn’t a good side, and deep down, everyone knows it.

If we had been beaten by a better team, there wouldn’t have been such anger both on the forums and across social media. But we weren’t. We were beaten by a poor Ibrox side we briefly made look better than they are. Other clubs will prove, over the coming weeks and months, that this team is exactly as bad as we said they were before the match kicked off.

The media’s evaluations of players across the city are ridiculous. They base their views on small sample sizes or, as in this case, a single 90 minutes. We’ve watched these players over a far longer timeline. We know their weaknesses almost as well as we know our own team’s.

Take Hagi, for instance. He flatters to deceive. He’s a show pony, a luxury player in a team that cannot afford luxuries.

There’s talk they might sell him in this window, but the valuations being bandied about are ludicrous. If he were all that, the Spanish club he was loaned to would have signed him outright. They didn’t. And it’s not as though he wasn’t advertised; he spent the summer on the transfer list. Everyone knew it, and no one wanted him.

This isn’t just a Celtic fan or site talking. My view reflects the wider football consensus. No one rates this guy.

Raskin? He’s a little thug. Put him under real pressure, and he’ll make the mistakes that cost them games. Our problem was that we didn’t turn the heat up enough on him.

And Robin Propper? He’s exactly what we’ve always said—a shocking centre-back, one of the worst this league has seen.

Ninety minutes doesn’t turn these players into world-beaters.

But the Ibrox fans and their media cheerleaders need to believe otherwise. They have to believe this is the start of something. They’ve done it before, and the more they indulge in this delusion, the more it hurts when reality bites.

They never seem to learn. Instead of waiting to see if there’s a genuine run of form, they lose their minds after every positive result.

This is why I’m not overly concerned about the result. Yes, the performance was worrying, but the defeat itself? Not so much. I’m certainly not buying into the hype around their team. They’re simply not good enough to mount any sort of sustained title challenge. If Aberdeen had kept their heads and not collapsed, Ibrox would be miles off the pace in third, never mind competing with us at the top.

The focus on isolated games, like the cup final and this one, is absurd. They’re eleven points behind us, and both sides have beaten the other 3–0 this season. Those other points were dropped against the rest of this league. Even some of their wins have been scrappy at best. There remain real problems over there.

Their issues run much deeper than anything a single game was going to reveal or fix. If the media wants to ignore this and make fools of themselves all over again, they’re welcome to. If Ibrox fans want to pretend their squad is full of world-class players, that’s their delusion to embrace. That all plays beautifully into our hands.

(Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)