Well this is…something…5-0 down on aggregate over a game and a half vs a team who sacked a manger and who have given the job to a fan who is essentially on placement to the end of the season. Celtic need to score next or you could be looking at 4 or 5.
I think we’re seeing yet again that both Celtic and Rangers both require managers who get it.
If you look at the perceptible shifts in the balance of power between the two over the last 60 years, they’ve happened under managers who got it.
First Jock Stein’s arrival to Celtic in the mid 1960s. He got it.
Jock Wallace got it and ended Celtic’s dominance.
Billy McNeill obviously got it when he took over in 1978.
After the period of the New Firm in the 1980s, Graeme Souness arrived at Ibrox. He got it.
Billy McNeill again got it when he returned in 1987 and promptly won the double in Celtic’s centenary year.
Walter Smith certainly got it when he replaced Souness.
Tommy Burns, while he ultimately couldn’t attain ultimate success, got it and revitalised Celtic as a club after a terrible slump.
Martin O’Neill got it. Oh he got it alright.
Walter Smith in his second coming from 2007 on didn’t need to be told what it was. It was in him.
Neil Lennon got it.
Ally McCoist got it.
Brendan Rodgers gets it.
Steven Gerrard, a managerial failure anywhere else, got it.
Giovanni Van Bronckhorst got it, even if the Rangers board did not get him.
Ange got it.
Barry Ferguson GETS IT in capital letters.
Ronny Deila did not get it. Gordon Strachan did not get it. Liam Brady did not get it. Paul Le Guen did not get it. Phillippe Clement did not get it.
You’ve got to get it, or it will get you.
Maaaadddeeeeda
Maeda now level with Sam Dalby at the top of the Premier Division scoring chart on 13 goals.
What a match this is. A Cup Final feel to it.
Rangers will require every last drop of that Ferguson/McGregor/Dodds staunchness to hang on here. Celtic steadily turning the screw.
Hyun coming on for Celtic
Hat a bhoy
Simply the greatest fixture in world football
What a tackle by the Korean substitute. He gets it!
Rangers lead after 88 minutes! Incredible scenes! What a goal by Igomane!
Mock him all they like but this should scare the Celtic fans.
Scenes we all want to see around the Rangers dugout as Celtic supporters are getting involved in aggro.
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What a chance for Johnston!
He’s had an absolute mare going forward
Rangers were there for the taking . Sad in indictment of Celtic that they couldn’t figure them out .
Give the job Ferguson !
Celtic 2 Rangers 3 FT.
A famous victory for Barry Ferguson’s men at Celtic Park in the most dramatic fashion.
One of the great Old Firm derby games.
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Jesus that was so poor.
The Huns were brutal. They had a couple of passes for then second goal. Otherwise they didn’t want to have the ball. And still they scored three.
Schmeichel was really poor with the ball today. Johnston and Carter Vickers both had shocking games. Bullied off the ball and so slow and careless with the ball. Real lack of responsibility from CCV too. He had lots of space to move into with the ball and just wouldn’t do it. Nawrocki was limited on the ball and couldn’t move it left but he defended well in fairness. And Schlupp looked like a Crystal Palace sub.
Hard to give many pass marks. Maeda obviously continued his excellent form. Engels was decent but a bit lost sometimes in that defensive role. Yang was good off the bench and Jota was good before going off.
Kuhn was shite. McCowan had some nice moments but doesn’t play with much discipline and can be very careless. Hatate did ok I think but again you’d want more leadership from him in midfield. Idah was ok I thought too.
The couple of injuries killed us but we really lacked a bit of leadership out there. We need much more from guys like CCV and Johnston on the ball and in adversity.
One of the great Old Firm derby games which reaffirmed the fact it is world sport’s greatest fixture. A game which meant nothing and yet meant everything.
Barry Ferguson managing the famous Glasgow Rangers is unquestionably the most exciting story in world sport right now.
People who support Celtic laughed. They assumed that that Barry Ferguson would be a stereotypical dunderhead, a Rab C. Nesbitt type, who would inevitably preside over a short but hilarious catastrophe, a circus of the sort Alan Shearer presided over at Newcastle in 2009.
Instead, the evidence so far tells us that a terrible beauty has been born. Ferguson has revitalised Rangers.
Even people who do not support Rangers, even people who are Celtic minded, like me, are seduced by this story.
We want to inhale Barry Ferguson’s Scottish, British, Unionist, Presbyterian, Protestant West of Scotland staunchness, even if deep down we hate it.
We need it.
Why? Because in these souless, atomised times, we are desperate to feel SOMETHING. Something authentic, even if it is dangerous.
We are desperate for an enemy. To create that enemy, we first have to be seduced in a smug, ironic fashion by their seemingly obvious ludicrousness, and then be shocked by them turning out to be deadly serious.
Then we become desperate to defeat them.
When Donald Trump announced his run for US President in 2015, people laughed. They thought this would be a hilarious catastrophe and a humiliation for Trump. They thought back to Barack Obama joking at Trump’s expense at that dinner in 2013, and they imagined this would be how it would be. When Trump started leading the Republican polls, “serious” liberal commentators sarcastically and smarmily declared that everybody was loving this spectacle. Liberals were enjoying it, enjoying the entertainment. “You just want want to see how far he can push it, don’t you?” It was a great laugh, or so people thought. But no self appointed “serious” people took Trump seriously.
Hillary Clinton would obliterate the joke candidate that Donald Trump was. Wouldn’t she? Celtic supporters thought the same thing when Rangers appointed Barry Ferguson.
Now Trump is the fascist dictator of the USA. He was authentic. An authentic fascist.
Barry Ferguson is authentic. He is staunch. He is the stereotype of a RANGERS MAN. And we want that. We don’t want foreign jobbers like Ronny Deila, Paul Le Guen or Phillippe Clement. We want Rangers to be maanged by somebody who FEELS IT, somebody who in another context could be firing bricks at PSNI officers on July 12th, topless and sunburnt and wearing Union Jack shorts, being water cannoned, all because Catholic primary schoolchildren going to school are being protected by PSNI officers from Loyalist mobs. We want Rangers to be managed by somebody we imagine standing outside one of those horrific Glasgow dive bars shouting “see you, pal, SEE YOU”, who then headbutts a bouncer.
Barry Ferguson’s bodily and facial gestures are astoundingly visually compelling.
We feel it. Rangers are FEELING IT.
We want PROPER CELTIC MEN and they, and we, want PROPER RANGERS MEN.
That’s what we all want. We want to FEEL IT.
But the risk is that like Donald Trump, Barry Ferguson, the great entertainer in his still honeymoon period as Rangers manager, may not turn out to be the joke we all thought he was. He may, like Donald Trump, prove to be a monster who returns Rangers Football Club to greatness.
That is the risk, the gamble, the high stakes game we are now part of. That by FEELING IT, we may end up feeling broken, prostrate and utterly defeated and humiliated.
Images like this are what we live for when we watch sport. They are compelling.
The mad eyes. The big thick head. The Rangersness. There were 100 opportunities to create even more visually compelling screenshots I missed during that match, so this will have to do.
This image is why we love sport.
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Absolutely no need to be dragging trump into every thread.
Celtic were very very poor there lads. Rangers look pretty limited but that was like a win ireland would be delighted with. Fighting like bastards and making the most of our chances…
Celtic deserved that sadly
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