As Rangers fans lick their wounds after a disastrous season, Celtic are preparing to add the final two trophies to a fifth domestic treble in seven campaigns.
After winning four on the bounce following our promotion back to the Premiership, this was not supposed to happen, and yet the Ibrox side have put up meek resistance to a Celtic juggernaut.
The Parkhead side, reluctantly, deserve credit for sweeping Scotland away this season and Rangers would’ve had to be on the top of their game to halt them.
Celtic couldn’t match the sheer intensity of the Rangers team when we lifted 55 and eventually the wheels fell off for them too. It proceeded the sort of rebuild Rangers are about to go through.
Ange Postecoglou has used their resources smartly and they now boast an albeit expensively assembled squad which – between the wages on offer and the five substitution rule – should be enough to take care of anyone on domestic soil.
But this notion there are ‘light-years” between the two sides, as mooted by Parkhead’s answer to Simple Jack in John Hartson, is nothing more than an arrogant hubris that everyone at Ibrox is all too familiar with.
Celtic hubris should be welcomed by Rangers
Anyone who has watched the Old Firm clashes this season can see the difference between the two teams. Rangers are a team full of easy goals and anxiety who do not have the required firepower to outgun their Old Firm rivals.
Conversely, the momentum is with Celtic, who are being ruthlessly managed and focused by Postecoglou, and their £20m+ attack is full of players who can do the business.
But the notion that these games, frenetic as they may be, aren’t about as close as they’ve been in a generation is for the dogs and Rangers will come back with fiercer resistance and fresh blood next season.
The suggestion otherwise is a tad overblown and as heads roll at Rangers a fresh injection of energy and spending will see an improved title challenge next season.
But all Celtic’s extravagant hubris will do is heap the pressure on their own team from their own stands should Rangers start fiercely and the wheels creak at Parkhead.
Arrogance builds pressure – as the Rangers team has found out post-55 – and the more hubris the better as long as the Ibrox side can properly bite back.
The last few seasons have proven these things can turn in an instant and with a big summer on the horizon we can look forward to the tightest title challenge in a generation next season.
