Disappointed but not disheartened

Life under Philippe Clement at Rangers has been largely rosy having closed the potential gap at the top of the league, topped our Europa League group with a historic win against Real Betis and secured the first silverware of the season by returning the League Cup to Ibrox for the first time in 12 years.

But yesterday at Parkhead reality hit back with a bump.

Rangers travelled to Parkhead of course severely understrength with the injury-list growing weekly however expectations going into the game had been recalibrated with our good form set against their patchy recent results. In most circumstances travelling across the city with a reserve right-back in midfield, a youngster at right-wing and our only fit striker leading the line would have seen the game watched through the cracks of our fingers but today there was perhaps a bit more belief before kick-off. As it turns out that was misplaced. 

We didn’t gift Celtic the customary early goal via a defensive blunder but we did drift out of the game and were put under periods of pressure which eventually led to the opening goal via a corner-kick after 25 minutes. It was no less than we deserved at that point but thereafter, despite not dominating, we did probably go on to create the better chances with Cyriel Dessers guilty of one horrendous miss, so bad that despite being clean through he failed to get a shot away. 

Our No9 wasn’t alone in disappointing with the support acts of Sima, Cantwell and McCausland also not at the levels required. Young Ross can probably be given some leeway given his age and inexperience but the rest need to be performing in these games if we want to leave with any points when the final whistle blew. Cantwell has shown in the past he can give us more and we simply have to see it in these fixtures. 

There was of course a remarkable incident when Alistair Johnston managed to slap the ball out of play with his hand and inexplicably no penalty was awarded by referee Nick Walsh. We have VAR of course but this only added to the befuddlement. Somehow after viewing replays of the stonewaller, it was decided that no penalty should be awarded and so the game restarted with a goal-kick. 

The incident was then later shown to be offside despite the fact that protocol dictates this would not have been checked at the time as no goal or penalty resulted. Thus it looks like some arse-covering has been going on in VAR-HQ and Rangers have requested that the audio of the incident be provided. We’ll see what happens there! 

A moment of quality after half-time then appeared to put the game out of reach with an excellent strike from Kyogo – something we could only dream of happening at the other end of the pitch – doubling Celtic’s lead. And that sums up the difference between the two teams. One passed up decent chances while the other created one out of nothing. And that won’t change until we have better players in advanced positions with Fabio Silva hopefully being the beginning of that. 

Our chances weren’t helped however, not by our opponent’s excellence, but instead by Nick Walsh seemingly losing his cards. Normally card-happy, as he would later go on to be, he failed to send off Bernardo after flattening Connor Goldson and then deemed Johnston’s elbow into the face of Sima not to be worthy of a second-yellow.

One blatant error in isolation was truly bad enough but both in a matter of minutes was an extraordinarily spineless piece of refereeing from someone who is supposedly one of the top referees in the country. The non-penalty has commanded most of the post-match attention however these were far worse errors by the on-pitch official in my opinion.

James Tavernier pulled one back with a terrific free-kick late on and despite 8 minutes of injury time it was too little, too late as we were not helped by Leon Balogun’s correct dismissal. And so the chance to go top of the league with our games in hand was removed and some reality was provided to the recent feel-good factor at Ibrox. 

Clement has been carrying a threadbare squad – one that lacked quality in the first place – beyond what could realistically have been expected. His management has delivered a consistent run of results across all competitions but a result like yesterday has been in the post. You can only stretch a limited squad so far before eventually a bump in the road is reached and that came in the shape of the defeat at Parkhead. 

We shouldn’t however be completely disheartened. The team was clearly understrength and going across the city isn’t easy at the best of times. If we win our games in hand – which yes cannot be taken for granted – we are still very much in a title race, something that we had written-off only 8 short weeks ago before the Belgian took charge. 

If we can secure a victory against Kilmarnock on Tuesday and hopefully get some players back over the winter-break, as well as reinforcements in the door, then perhaps – just perhaps – we can make a fist of things going into the latter part of the season.

There is no European football until March, while helps, and we have it in our hands to apply some pressure to a team who have had it all too easy recently in the league. They handled it today better than we did but, as the manager has reinforced, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

I said a couple of weeks ago that I do worry about our lack of quality up top and how long we can carry that deficiency and being completely decimated in central midfield has only added to the headache. That said Clement has shown, I think, that he is a proper manager and certainly of the character required to take this team forward with the right backing from the board. And he simply must receive it. 

Brendan Rodgers alluded to some unrest at Parkhead both in his pre and post-match interviews and it’s clear they are not the all-conquering team that he once commanded.

But that means nothing if we ourselves don’t raise the bar at our end and move forward after what has, in truth, been 24 months of regression with two very poor summer transfer windows hamstringing us hugely.

Those mistakes lie with the board and it is the board who must find a way, and the funds, to fix it.

I have always said that as a club we should now be self-sustainable however their errors have set us back and perhaps some front-loading is again needed to revamp this team under the right manager. It would be foolish to hire a man capable of the job and then tie one hand behind his back and send him into the ring and expect him to succeed. 

Tuesday is now very much a must-win as we have in the past seen one bad result bleed into two or three in quick succession. Clement very ably guarded against complacency or a comedown after the big results against Betis and Aberdeen, he must now ensure that the team immediately bounces back and does not let one defeat destabilise our potential challenge.

We can be rightly disappointed but after one defeat we should not be completely disheartened.