Kenny McIntyre brought me [Patrick Sinat], Motherwell fan Kevin Torrance, and Rangers supporter Scott Cameron to the BBC studio to discuss Scottish football concerns with Tom English and Ian McCall.
When McIntyre asked if Celtic should be concerned about the Rangers takeover, I told BBC Sportsound, “I’m not sure if I’d go so far as to say we’re concerned.
“I believe Celtic is going about its business as usual. I believe we have such a strong structure at the club that it is Rangers’ responsibility to catch us, and we will just continue to do what we are doing.
“I mean, if you look at what Celtic have done in the past, when we lost the Scottish Cup semi-final [in 2016], we brought in Brendan Rodgers.
“When we lost the league in 2021 we tried to get Eddie Howe, one of the hottest young coaches. As it stands, we got Ange Postecoglou and the rest is history. Then we go and get Brendan Rodgers again.
“So whenever the question has been asked, Celtic have come up with the answers. So I think for us, we just need to keep doing more of what we are doing, and ask the question of Rangers, rather than the other way round.”
67 Hail Hail rejects BBC’s man’s proposal about Rangers closing the gap to Celtic
In terms of reducing the gap to Celtic, analyst Ian McCall believes that if Celtic has a bad transfer window and Rangers has a good one, the two clubs’ present gap would close.
McCall stated, “If Celtic sign two or three players who don’t quite work, and Rangers sign four or five players, and you’ll never get four or five, but three or four of them turn into a Nico Raskin or a Daizen Maeda or whatever, and get a proper manager, obviously, and it was the same ifs when Celtic appointed Postecoglou, I believe it can be done far, far faster than people say.
Sinat: “Well, we are talking about Celtic are due a bad window, we didn’t exactly have the best window when Brendan Rodgers came back.
“I mean, of the 10 signings we signed there, I think Luis Palma was probably the only player that kind of made his mark.
“But then he fell off a cliff in December when he scored the bulk of his goals in his first six months, so we’ve had a bad window, and we still went on to win a double that season.”
McCall: “That’s a fair point, but your bad window didn’t coincide with a good window for Rangers.”
Sinat: “That’s true. That’s a fair point. But we’ll see what happens in the summer. We’ll see how Celtic respond. As I say, it’s not up to us to answer questions. It’s up to Rangers to try and keep up with us.”
McIntyre [laughing]: “A nice wee look across the studio there, shots fired!”
English: “But it’s true.”
McIntyre: “Of course it is!”
English: “Two things are going to have to happen. Rangers are going to have to start making really, really good decisions which they haven’t done for many, many years and Celtic are going to have to start making really bad decisions. Then the gap starts to narrow.”
The narrative surrounding Rangers’ takeover seems to be that Celtic need to be worried. That’s simply not true.
Yes, keep your eye on what’s going on across the other side of the city but Celtic have got nothing to prove here.
Time and again new owners have come in at Rangers and promised to end Celtic’s domination since 2012, and time and again the Parkhead club have blown them out of the water.
