ian1964

Pity it wasn't right across his face!

Facing Celtic manager Neil Lennon didn’t worry Steven Gerrard on Sunday afternoon. Yet a Saturday morning breakfast meeting with Rangers legend Walter Smith had him feeling like a nervous wreck. Gerrard showed no signs of anxiety at Parkhead as Gers won there for the first time in nine years. That previous win was back in the Smith era in 2010 when Kenny Miller scored twice in a 3-1 win. But Gerrard doesn’t want to hear his name mentioned in the same sentence as the legendary Rangers boss — revealing he’s still in awe of the man after 18 months in the job. He said: “Don’t mention me in the same breath as Walter Smith. Please don’t mention me and Walter Smith together. He is a legend to me. “I had breakfast with Walter Smith on Saturday morning and I was as nervous as a kitten. “I have got nothing but admiration and respect for the guy and I love it when he comes to see me. “But don’t mention me in the same breath as Walter Smith, please.” That was three times Gerrard mentioned Smith by his full name when referring to him — another sign of the respect he feels for the 71-year-old. But the iconic gaffer would have been proud of the way Gerrard handled himself at Celtic Park. He showed his emotions at the final whistle, but was there anything wrong with his celebrations? Gerrard had done a job on Celtic and was entitled to enjoy his moment. At 1-1 at half-time he had work to do getting into the heads of his players and convincing them they could beat Celtic when it mattered. Gerrard said: “I just said to them to go and play the second 45 minutes and reward yourself for the last six months of hard work. Go back to the first day of pre-season and how do you want to feel walking out of this stadium? “Do you want to reward yourself for six months of real hard graft and get a result that the majority of the first half deserved and that the previous 90 minutes against this team deserved? I think they went out and delivered. “I was absolutely delighted with the majority of the first half. “When you come to places like Celtic Park, it is important that you frustrate the crowd and the Celtic team and we had them exactly where we wanted them after 35 minutes. “We were dominating and then obviously we concede a penalty and Allan McGregor does wonders to save that. “Then we suffer an equaliser that came from us getting involved in a game that was up and down and that I didn’t really want. “I said to them at half-time that we don’t want to get involved in a game that is up and down because they have got good players, got pace and got quality. “I wanted us to reset and continue the game-plan that allowed us to dominate for 35 minutes and in periods of the second half we did it again. “Celtic are always going to have moments and they are always going to put crosses into your box and have shots. They are a good team, a successful team.” Rangers played as a team but individually there were some standout performances from the likes of McGregor, Borna Barisic, Steven Davis and Ryan Kent. Gerrard should take credit for the way he’s changed the mentality within the changing room in the last 18 months. He said: “I have got characters. The team needed a spine, a lot of change. It needed big players who weren’t scared of the big occasion. “It had some and it had a few that were coming to the end that I wished were ten years younger, like your Kenny Millers. “But there were a lot of changes that needed to happen. We had to virtually wipe it clean over two or three transfer windows. “We are still not finished. We need to keep building, keep getting stronger, keep learning. “But I look at this team and it is different to the one I inherited by a long way.” There have still been some glitches this season — failing to win at Aberdeen wasn’t good enough before the Betfred Cup final defeat to Celtic. Winning on Sunday felt huge, but writing off Lennon’s men would be a foolish mistake for anyone to make. And Gerrard is no fool. He said: “Look, I respect opinions and it is not always going to be nice. That is football at the top. “Celtic and Rangers get a lot of attention in the media. Opinions are going to fly here, there and everywhere. They are going to fly to my players as a group. “But I know my players. I work with them daily and I have gone on this journey with them. “I have a lot of belief and confidence that if we keep doing the right things and show character like we did on Sunday and in the cup final, then our day will come.” Gers will head out to Dubai for the winter break, with Gerrard determined to bring them back with the same focus and drive they had at Celtic Park. He added: “The next step is to qualify in the Scottish Cup. It is to be professional and be ready to try and beat Stranraer and then St Mirren. “Last year, after a really positive derby win, for whatever reason, we never got the result we wanted at Rugby Park and that was damaging. “So we have to be ready come the beginning of the game against St Mirren. We need to go and fight and show character like we did against Celtic and get another three points. It is just game by game.” https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/5118094/rangers-celtic-gerrard-nervous-breakfast-smith/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1577745308

Listened to that earlier, I don't speak tim talk so couldn't understand what was being said!!!

By Tom English BBC Scotland It is worth taking a closer look at Rangers' opening goal in their 2-1 win at Celtic Park on Sunday, scored by Ryan Kent and illustrative of the very serious title credentials Steven Gerrard's team now carry with them. We think of how it all ended, the excellent Borna Barisic playing it into Kent and the midfielder sweeping it first-time past Fraser Forster, but it was how it started that made it such an impressive thing. Rangers were pegged back in their own right-back position, level with their own penalty area and facing a Celtic throw-in. Ryan Jack won it off Callum McGregor and 28 seconds later the ball was in the back of Celtic's net. Jack, Steven Davis, Glen Kamara, Joe Aribo, Alfredo Morelos, Barisic and finally Kent all got touches. Seven Rangers players taking it virtually the length of the pitch in the backyard of the champions and then finishing clinically and brilliantly - if that goal didn't make Celtic people gulp at the battle ahead to achieve nine in a row then they haven't yet woken up to the danger coming at them from the other side of the city. Celtic boss Neil Lennon said in the aftermath that there was no need for his team to panic - and there isn't. There's a long way to go. He also said that Celtic were in this kind of position after losing the Old Firm game last December and went on to win the title. That's true, too, but things have changed since then. When Rangers won this fixture a year ago they won it at Ibrox not Celtic Park. That's a big difference right there. They also lost their next league game to Kilmarnock and immediately handed the momentum back to Celtic. They went on to drop more points to St Johnstone, Hibs, Kilmarnock (for a second time), Celtic and Kilmarnock once again. They shipped 15 points from January onwards, eight of them to Killie. There are no signs that they're about to do the same. Rangers are a lot better this season than they were a year ago and those other teams - Celtic apart - are worse, and therefore less likely to catch them out. If Rangers win their game in hand and match Celtic result for result then they're champions. They'd need to show all kinds of steel and nerve to get over the line, but they haven't been lacking in those departments this season. Rangers were emphatically the better side on Sunday and not even a goal awarded to Celtic in error and another red card for Morelos could stop them. Last month they lost the League Cup final to their great rivals in the most painful circumstances but they looked like the team that had taken more from that day at Hampden. They had more edge, more physicality, more intent. They looked fitter and stronger. They over-ran Celtic in midfield. Ryan Christie, James Forrest and Odsonne Edouard have 49 goals between them this season. There was barely a peep out of any of them. Christie, a major influence in most of the games he's played, missed a penalty, Forrest was anonymous and Edouard, so impressive for so long, got lucky with his goal and didn't do a whole lot else. Gerrard figured out how to cut their supply and negate their impact. This was surely the biggest day of his managerial career. There's been talk about Celtic being a tired bunch of players and there's some - but only some - merit in that. Last season only Derby's Richard Keogh played more minutes for club and country than Callum McGregor, and this season McGregor has played more minutes than any other player in the world (3,714 minutes across 42 games). Kristoffer Ajer is second on that list, Forrest is ninth and Scott Brown is tenth. Connor Goldson and James Tavernier are fifth and eighth. That's four Celtic men and two Rangers men in the top 10. The individual match-ups show that McGregor has played almost a thousand more minutes than Jack this season and Brown has played 552 more minutes than Davis. Of the 12 players who played middle to front in both teams, Celtic players occupy the first five spots in the most played category. When you look at the overall picture, 11 versus 11, the numbers this season narrow considerably. Celtic's starting line-up have now played 28,645 minutes; Rangers are on 28,372 minutes. The difference in energy was noticeable on Sunday, but if some of Celtic's key men were tired then that's an issue for Lennon. He has a big enough squad to rest some key men. And it doesn't explain why Rangers have played better football in this fixture over the past year. Celtic's struggles with Rangers didn't start on Sunday or even last month at Hampden. Should there be surprise that they could go to Celtic Park and win so well? Yes, a little, but the signs have been there for a while now. If you take the past six games between them, Rangers have won three and Celtic have won three. In two of the games the Celtic goalkeeper was their best player - Craig Gordon last December at Ibrox and Fraser Forster last month at Hampden. In three of the six games Celtic managed just one shot on target in the 90 minutes. Celtic were dominant in just one of them - the 2-0 win at Ibrox earlier in the season. Last December, Brendan Rodgers admitted that the "best team won" while talking about his own side's unforced errors and poor decision-making. In the next derby, Morelos got himself sent off after 31 minutes and still Rangers looked the better side for much of it. Before Forrest grabbed the winner with four minutes to go, Lennon was getting stick from his own supporters. We might forget that now, but Celtic Park was an unhappy place until Forrest did his thing. The next one was a 2-0 Rangers win at Ibrox, a template for what happened on Sunday. Davis, Kamara, Jack and Scott Arfield were the main forces in midfield that day and Celtic couldn't handle them. Then came Celtic's convincing 2-0 win at Ibrox. After that came the League Cup final and we all know about the smash-and-grab that took place there. It's instructive to think back to the early stages of that final and the menace that Rangers possessed from corners and free-kicks. Three times in the opening minutes Goldson and Filip Helander won headers around Celtic's six-yard box. The same aerial threat happened on Sunday, only this time Rangers made it count. Christopher Jullien and Ajer weren't always alive to the movement around them. They got away with it before, but not this time. No wonder Gerrard reacted the way he did on full-time. Some demons from Hampden were exorcised in that moment. Gerrard will have known that the only way to hurt Celtic - truly hurt them - was to go to their own place and beat them. He has done that now. Over the past eight and a half years when Celtic looked over their shoulder they saw no challenger in the distance. If they look behind them now they still won't see anything because their danger is right beside them, shoulder to shoulder. Years have been spent talking about whether the gap between them was closing. It's closed. This race looks like it's going to the wire. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50949831

Maybe I am wrong?

Of course, cliché , the point is we do not need to sell, we don't want to sell, if we do sell it will be for a lot of money

Any Rangers fan voting for this sectarian bigoted bastard needs their head checked! utter scum

Maybe I am way out of touch regards this, but when watching matches on sky/BT we see very quick replays, why can't the 4th official and both managers not have a monitor on the touchline to review incidents? 4th official could assist the refs, I know that is pretty much VAR but right now that option is available.

Separate Entity FC will panic buy in January, or try to! so winning the league this season will seriously harm them regardless whether we qualify for the CL, they won't! so the carrots for our players is there and they all buy into SG & being successful will only enhance our players value, however as you say time will tell but I don't think any of our 1st team players are looking to move in January!.

Again I agree 100%, winning the league this season will have them in serious financial trouble as I'm sure they will now panic buy in January

A lot of contenders tbh, I also think Goldson was outstanding as well.

I don't want VAR, look at the problems in the EPL, Scottish football is amateur as it is just now and it would just cause more problems, is it wrong for me to think the Rangers statement was their way of highlighting the recent decisions against us were blatant cheating?

Nothing in this IMO, he showed the card to Katic but maybe Katic turned away and didn't see it therefore showed it again to make sure he knew who was getting booked

In a nutshell, we don't need to sell, the whole squad has bought into SG success and believe they are on the brink of something special. Of course there will be offers and maybe some players are tempted, but they know if they stay and are successful then they will get their big move. However if a player is tempted with a big move just now then they might try to take it, but there is no way Rangers are letting any 1st choice player go in January.

If anybody has watched the match back, like I do, it's quite incredible how many 2nd offences the Separate Entity FC players have without a 2nd booking after having been booked already! there is no doubt in my mind we are treated differently from every other player/team, blatant bias.