It’s not so often that we would want to cover stories like these as few rarely break tradition, but today, that’s not the case as Rangers win the SPL.
Annoyingly for them, much of the media attention has still stuck with their bitter rivals Celtic, but at least for a much less favourable reason as far as the Ibrox men are concerned. Usually, the press tend to look positively upon Celtic as they continue their positive trajectory in Scottish football …
But this season, they have been phenomenally poor. And similarly to how many have derided Liverpool’s long-awaited Premier League success (by contrasting it with their poorer opponents), titles generally reading ‘Rangers Win the SPL‘ seems to cast a similar shadow over their achievements when compared with Celtic. But not here …
When coming into the job nearly three years ago, Steven Gerrard could have done one of two things: either; accept the way things were and follow Celtic as closely as possible to make it difficult for them. Or, believe in his own brand of football and play them at their own game.
Needless to say, when I’ve watched them this season, it’s clear that they employed the latter. In fact, when I contrast a number of poor performances from Celtic against the brighter alternatives of Rangers, the blue lot just simply looked sharper, hungrier and fitter in the league.
For me, when I saw the news filter through of ‘Rangers win the SPL‘ title, thus preventing Celtic from claiming their tenth title in a row, I wasn’t surprised. It appeared that The Hoops grew far too complacent in the Scotland duopoly, and Gerrard allowed his men to capitalise.
For the sake of football purity, I’m very glad that Rangers were able to briefly break the stranglehold that Celtic claimed over the SPL in recent years. Having said that, they’re going to have to remain very vigilant if they’re going to stand a chance of preserving their new status.
Namely because this embarrassment (you’d think) would only spurn The Bhoys on to ‘claim back what is rightfully theirs‘, plus that the imminent return of fans in the stadium will call for such action to take place quickly. And (this is just me spit-ballin’ here), Rangers might find it difficult to hold onto a number of their star men now that they’ve made a bigger name for themselves. Personally, I’d be ecstatic if a team like my beloved Manchester United would go after Ianis Hagi. But only time will tell …