Ally McCoist seems to be suffering memory loss as he joins in the big debate of the week- just how large is the gap between the two Glasgow clubs in the SPFL Premiership.
Outside of Graeme Souness there is an acknowledgement that Celtic are far better than the mob assembled by the Phil Clement Revolution! After a serious of single goal victories stretching over two years a fairer scoreline was achieved last Sunday in a 3-0 win for the champions.
Souness and Clement have reached for the comfort blanket of denial, surprising given the age of both men, but McCoist and others like Kris Boyd and Barry Ferguson know that the gap is huge.
Massive in terms of over the last couple of years when the Ibrox club managed to keep the derby competitive but it wasn’t so long ago that Celtic fans felt that their side eased up at five when many dream of seeing the number seven back on the scoreline of a derby contest.
𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗬 𝘅 𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗘𝗥𝗦
⚽️ “I can’t remember, sadly, looking at Celtic and Rangers’ teams and seeing as big of a gulf.”
😐 Ally McCoist reflects on Old Firm defeat.#RangersFC | #CelticFC pic.twitter.com/aGLWWLRz3Z
— talkSPORT BET (@talksportbet) September 6, 2024
Playing the good guy on TalkSPORT McCoist claimed:
I can’t remember, sadly, looking at Rangers and Celtic’s team and seeing as big a gulf, which is a major, major concern.
Celtic have dominated and have been better by a distance recently. I looked at the Cup Final last season. Could have went either way, the goalie makes a mistake and Celtic win it. You then look at the season and think, well, we’ll see how it goes. And then boof, nah.
Celtic thoroughly deserved the victory. I look at Rangers and they look lacking in leadership, lacking in direction and it’s a big concern. That said, from Celtic’s point of view, they’ve had a great start to the season and fair play to them.
Since the former Question of Sport skipper is a firm believer in the Continuity Lie he surely can’t have forgotten the ‘Rangers side that he managed through 2012, 2013 ans 2014 before opting for Gardening Leave rather than face Celtic in a League Cup semi-final on 1 February2015.
Kenny McDowall was handed that task, with the assistance of some bizarre decisions from referee Craig Thompson the score was kept to 2-0 with Ian Black, Darren McGregor, Richard Foster, Fraser Aird and Nicky Law providing the opposition to the eventual cup winners.
When Mark Warburton won promotion the first season in the top flight contained 5-1 defeats at Celtic Park and Ibrox, the following season there was a 4-0 Scottish Cup semi-final defeat at Hampden followed by a 5-0 title clincher within a fortnight.
It is easy and predictably lazy to claim that the current gap has never been so wide but it clearly not the case, the teams of 2015 and 2018 from Ibrox were miles worse than Phil Clement’s current collection of waifs and strays.
With both teams going in very different directions the gap is likely to widen this season, only someone brave or foolish would tip Clement to still be in charge for the March return trip to Celtic Park, the Belgian has no more than a 50-50 chance of holding on to his job until the end of this year.
Of course the architect of much of these problems is McCoist himself, picking up the biggest manager’s salary in Scotland while taking on Brechin, Annan and Peterhead.
Training sessions at Murray Park often ended with contests to hit the manager’s bare backside from 18 yards away, although an ample target it was usually beyond the capabilities of Kevin Kyle and Fran Sandaza.
While McCoist passes judgement on others there is no doubt that he was the worst manager in the history of both clubs with cup defeats to Falkirk, Alloa, Raith Rovers, Queen of the South, Inverness Caley Thistle and Forfar on his CV alongside Malmo and Maribor.
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