Gordon Strachan has piled praise on Rangers boss Michael Beale - but fears the Englishman might be running out of time to get one over on Celtic rival Ange Postecoglou.
Both men will go head-to-head for a fourth time at Hampden on Sunday for a place in this season’s Scottish Cup Final. But while Postecoglou is closing in on a potential treble after bagging back-to-back derby wins in the League Cup Final and a crunch top flight clash at Parkhead, Beale is still looking to record his first ever victory against the champions. And former Celtic boss Strachan knows from experience that such winless runs can’t go on forever in a ferociously unforgiving city.
Speaking in this week’s episode of our Off the Ball podcast Strachan said: “Ange’s Celtic have come out the best in the last couple of matches but Michael Beale, I can assure you right now, is convinced that he’s going to win the game of football. That’s the way you feel and I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t feel that way.
“It’s not a case of putting form out of the window for Michael Beale at the moment. If you look at it in general he’s probably the most successful manager Rangers have had in terms of the initial run in the league. It’s been phenomenal.
“But I’m afraid your status is defined by the number of wins and more so in the Celtic-Rangers games - that’s the only collateral you’ve got because that’s the only thing the fans want.
“Don’t tell me how you’re going to win it. As a fan, don’t tell me what you are going to do, what your plans are, how good the football is going to be. Just win the game of football. That’s all they are interested in.”
And Strachan recalled how he learned the dangers of the job during his first few weeks as Celtic boss - after going out for dinner with Rangers boss Alex McLeish, his former Aberdeen team mate.
He said: “When Alex was the manager we went out for a meal when I first got to Celtic. We went out and you could see people looking at us. Then we decided after that, we can’t do that again, no matter how much we like one another and our families, we just can’t do it again.
“We’re actually sitting at a table, looking at each other, smiling and talking about good times knowing fine well that one of us is going to get the sack. One of us has got to go. One of us is going to have their lifestyle changed. It’s not going to be good. It’s not going to be funny. It’s going to be agony for us.”
Strachan – who led Celtic to three successive titles – is backing his old club to come out on top again at Hampden. Strachan - whose son Gavin is part of Postecoglou’s backroom team - said: “Obviously I want Celtic to win - there’s a family thing involved here as well!
“Celtic have got this in the background that they’ve won the recent encounters, which is terrific. But I don’t think Rangers, as a team, feel inferior to Celtic and I do think they can get a result.
“But I think Celtic, at the moments when you need an individual bit of flair, there’s a bit more there in the Celtic squad than there is in the Rangers squad. It’s going to be a really interesting game but I’ll take Celtic to win.
“It’s not going to change with Ange. That’s it - that’s what you’re getting - which is great for the players because it’s not confusing. The system that Ange has got is wonderfully exciting.
“Michael is probably thinking, ‘How do we stop this? Let’s tweak it a bit’. But I wouldn’t change that much from his way of attacking because I think there’s enough in there to cause havoc.
“You don’t want to spend five days thinking, ‘How do we stop Celtic?’. That would be a negative way of doing it. Michael is clever enough to go, ‘This is how we attack Celtic, this is what we do when we get the ball back’. For Michael it will probably be 80 percent attacking, 20 percent defending. But Ange will just do what Ange does.”
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