You can’t read too much into pre-season friendlies, so they say. But it’s all about the context.
For many Rangers fans, the loss to a bunch of Manchester United kids and fringe men last Saturday confirmed their worst fears for the season ahead, while a win over what was largely a bunch of Manchester City kids and fringe men on Tuesday night has some Celtic fans forgetting their own annoyances at their club’s transfer business, and convinced another treble is in the post.
Celtic fans will be excited because the one area of their side that looked a weak the other night, their back four, still has Cameron Carter-Vickers and Alistair Johnston to come back into it. And they will likely make signings to strengthen the other two slots in that backline.
For Rangers fans, there was simply very little upon which to hang their hopes. And that's before we even mention the abysmal first half display in the defeat to English League One side Birmingham City last night. It is rare to hear a side booed off at the interval in a friendly, but they deserved every bit of it.
The usual caveats that it is only pre-season and there is plenty of time left in the transfer window apply, but the current situation at Rangers is bordering on the shambolic. Monumental off-field blunders continue to hamstring the Ibrox club and can be traced back over a decade or more.
Whether it was spaffing huge wages at the start of ‘the journey’ instead of investing in their youth set-up and infrastructure, allowing key assets Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos to walk out the door for nothing, handing Michael Beale huge sums of money last summer or the current Ibrox redevelopment fiasco that has left the team playing at Hampden for the first few months of this season, a succession of club custodians have hindered their progress. And it has all led to here.
On the other side of the city, Celtic have accumulated astonishing wealth in relative terms almost by osmosis. Their fans and even manager Brendan Rodgers may gripe about their own board’s reluctance to increase their transfer spend accordingly to compete in European competition, but for all the talk about how small ‘the gap’ was between the squads last season, it appears Celtic will be starting the campaign in a significantly stronger position than Rangers.
James Tavernier and Connor Goldson look to be heading out of the door, and as much maligned as they may have been over recent seasons, that is a lot of leadership and experience (and goals, in Tavernier’s case) for Philippe Clement to replace.
It appears though that the long-awaited clear out, reset, call it what you will, has finally arrived. Whether cleaning out the mainstays of the team – and some would argue, the stench of repeated failure – and rebuilding this Rangers side was the bill of goods that Clement was sold (and his comments over the summer would suggest it was not), that is the task that now lies before him.
Read more:
The question is, do the Rangers supporters have the patience, or the stomach, to watch their rivals potentially enjoy the sort of dominance over them as they had once revelled in until their manager can get them back to a consistently competitive level?
Football can change quickly, and a few good results at the start of the season might flip the narrative, but I can barely remember a time when Rangers supporters were so demoralised and pessimistic ahead of a new campaign.
There are many saying they wouldn’t blame manager Clement if he were to up sticks and leave in order to preserve his reputation, such is the doom and gloom over what may lie ahead over the next few weeks and months.
What should really be concerning Rangers fans though, and I think it is, is the prospect of what is to come over the next few years.
As of today, Rangers are starting from a position of weakness and cannot possibly compete with Celtic financially in order to level the playing field. By allowing a rather lacklustre and often crisis-ridden Celtic side to lift the title last season and access the guaranteed bounty that comes from Champions League qualification, the real gap between the clubs - their balance sheets - will only be widened further still.
It all leaves Rangers stuck between a rock and a hard place. Fans won’t want them to spend money the club doesn’t have, but neither will they want to sit back and watch their team lose title after title and trophy after trophy.
Clement could do with some time to rebuild his side and implement his style without the short-term pressures of having to deliver silverware, but it is a fanciful notion. If the season starts badly, there will be some level of understanding given the circumstances, sure, but that will only stretch so far.
Anyone arguing that this is the darkest situation Rangers have found themselves in is suffering from a rather severe case of recency bias, of course, but it is hard to remember a time when there was a pall of pessimism hanging so heavily over the fans and the club.
And it is getting harder and harder to see just how the club go about lifting it any time soon.
