Celtic have bossed Rangers twice in 2021; Hoops have no reason to fear them

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So Celtic have been drawn out of the Scottish Cup hat to face either Rangers or Cove Rangers as the 2021 Scottish Cup continues.

At the time of writing, our rivals have still to face off in their third-round tie. However, we’re not going to pretend Steven Gerrard’s side won’t come out on top. It’ll be a Rangers vs Celtic fourth-round tie at Ibrox, barring an absolutely phenomenal outcome in Govan this evening.

Now, we’re not blind. We all know how poor a season we’ve had domestically in particular. We’ve surrendered the league championship in a disgraceful manner. We sit 20 points behind Rangers and deserve absolutely nothing from our Premiership campaign.

The 2-0 defeat to Ross County in the Betfred Cup also has fans lacking in confidence that we can secure the big cup in this horrific campaign.

And it’s noticeable some of the negativity going around since the draw. One glance on Celtic’s social media post announcing the draw shows the dismay sweeping around many fans. Almost as if we have something to fear or that our campaign is over just because we’ve drawn Gerrard’s team.

I’m struggling to get my head around that. Celtic have bossed Rangers twice in 2021 alone. Outside of a derby in which we had a host of first-team players out through Covid, the Ibrox side have been second best against us all season. Yes, they’ve won the marathon because we stumbled too often along the way. But in actual head-to-heads against Rangers? We’ve bossed two of the three.

Critics will point to the fact we haven’t won one. I totally appreciate that and it’s a stat you can’t deny. But at Ibrox we were bossing it in January before going down to 10 men. That was a game Rangers clearly weren’t winning before Nir Bitton was given his marching orders. Rangers didn’t even manage a shot on target in the game either – instead relying on an own goal to beat the 10 men.

Recent meeting suggest Celtic will boss a third consecutive derby

Then you had the meeting at Celtic Park last month. Outside of Alfredo Morelos’ equaliser and a decent Ryan Kent volley, Rangers created nothing. They were dominated again by Celtic’s midfield as we formed chance after chance that we failed to put away. Our rivals again only managed three efforts on target to our eight. Once again, they were bossed and somehow managed to slither out of it with something.

When today’s draw was made, do you honestly think the Celtic players had their heads in their hands? Was Scott Brown really biting his fingernails? Could David Turnbull even see the draw or could he not see through his fingers?

Let’s get it right – Celtic will have been celebrating this today. It injects some much-needed excitement back into our season. It provides with a glorious chance to hit a massive morale-blow on our rivals, especially if it comes after the announcement of Eddie Howe to Parkhead.

This just isn’t a draw that should strike fear into Celtic fans. We’ve proven this season we can dominate these encounters even against their best XI. There’s a line to cross in terms of actually proving we can win the game, but Rangers hardly have a psychological grip over us. The last two matches proved that wasn’t the case.

If anything, the pressure is on our rivals to perform and show why they’ve won the league. They’ll be sweating at the prospect of having to do that against a side that looks like it has their number.

Finally we have something to get excited about this season. It’s time to start appreciating the opportunity we have – so long as they beat Cove Rangers of course!

In other news, John Kennedy has highlighted the behind-the-scenes work done by James Forrest.