What a strange day this has been in the title race. Dramatic, yes. But also strange.
Nobody expected Celtic to draw 0-0 at Easter Road against a massively depleted Hibs. It was our first slip-up in the Premiership since December after a fine 10 domestic wins on the bounce. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened as we dropped 2 key points.
It looked certain that Rangers would hammer Motherwell to narrow the gap at the top to 1. Yet, incredibly, that didn’t happen either. The Ibrox side somehow allowed a 2-0 lead to slip as they were also held to a draw. That 3 point advantage Celtic have at the top of the Premiership tree remains, and suddenly only 10 games remain between now and the end of the season.
However, whilst the title-winners won’t be confirmed for some time yet, what was confirmed today was the fact that Rangers have a major new weakness that they can’t stop showing. Indeed, Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side simply aren’t handling the pressure of a high-intensity title race.
Their dropped points this afternoon means that it’s 11 points conceded in their last 8 league matches. An incredibly dismal return considering they’re supposed to be champions. Overall this season, they’ve failed to win 9 of their 28 games. That’s a slip-up just under every 3 matches on average. All throughout, Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic have either been breathing down their necks or edging ahead in front of them.
Compare that to last season. Rangers managed to go through the entire season without defeat. They only drew 6 of their 38 matches. This whilst Celtic were all over the place and going from on-field disaster to off-field disaster. In other words, they flourished under absolutely no pressure whatsoever.
Rangers dropping points all over the place as Celtic receive big let-off
We don’t want to pretend everything is perfect. We won’t ignore the fact our performances have been declining recently and that we were dreadful in the 0-0 draw with Hibernian today. We’ve already gone into that extensively this afternoon on 67HailHail.
However, we’re in the middle of a title race and today’s slip-up marked our first 2 points dropped of 2022. As mentioned previously, our rivals have shipped 11. There’s only 1 team struggling with major consistency problems, and it isn’t the one belonging to Ange Postecoglou. Yes, we have our own problems, but winning hasn’t been a frequent one.
We saw just how much Rangers crumbled under the pressure in season 2018/19 and 19/20. They couldn’t cope when Celtic just kept picking up points and were so close to them in the league. Eventually, in both of the years mentioned, we went on to secure the title in a comfortable fashion.
We’re not saying that’s going to be the case here. Hopefully it will be, but there’s no guarantee of it. What we are saying is that Rangers have nowhere near the consistency levels Celtic do. They have a major weakness when it comes to their mentality in a proper title race, and the truth is that it’s been covered by their European success.
If it hadn’t been for their results against Borussia Dortmund, the truth is that van Bronckhorst would be under a lot more pressure. He’s been second best to Celtic and Postecoglou by far since he’s come into the job. They drop points at an alarming rate and from positions in which champions should never be doing.
It’s a massive boost for us how the last few hours have gone. However, the truth is we shouldn’t be overly surprised. Rangers are showing us their new weakness, and it’s absolutely killing them in the race for the title.
In other news, Matt O’Riley deserves better than the bench in the Celtic title run-in
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