It would not have taken much for post‑match media comments to prove more engaging than an awful – think bald men and a comb – Old Firm clash. Russell Martin and Brendan Rodgers duly delivered. Perhaps it was inevitable that a derby supposed to endorse such strongly held viewpoints about one half of Glasgow would end in stalemate.
The boos that rang out at full time demonstrated the scale of work Martin has to do in order to win over hearts and minds. The Rangers manager has been on the back foot since day one, with a poor start to the season strengthening the widely held sense that this is wrong man, wrong club, wrong time.
Twelve months ago with the dynamism in the team and the speed and the creativity, everything was there and you feel you can go into games and be really dynamic and creative and that’s what we all want to see.
“We’ve had a long time to reinforce the squad and listen, I’m hopeful that we can do that and get it over the line. The game is about the quality of your player. You can take the game to different levels based on your players.”
It feels nonsensical that Celtic, cash rich and supposedly ambitious, find themselves in this pickle with only hours of a transfer window remaining. They were painfully blunt in what was a rare scoreless Old Firm joust. Celtic have failed to score in three of their past four games. “We can assess it at the end of the window,” Rodgers said. “I repeat again, every manager wants players in early to bed them in and adapt his system and the styles and get that profile of play what we need. But we’re hopeful that we can do our work in this next period.”
What came before really was a non-event. John Souttar had the ball in the Celtic net after half an hour, only for the goal to be ruled out for offside. Rangers had earlier appealed in vain for a penalty after Bojan Miovski, who showed promise on his debut, tumbled under a challenge from Liam Scales.
Long before full time, Celtic seemed content to take a point. Rangers, who have been prone to defensive calamity, were grateful for the clean sheet. “The quality of the game wasn’t at a high enough level,” Rodgers said. What a wonderful understatement.
