Thread: How we are struggling against the worst Rangers team in living memory.

I would like everyone to honestly vote before reading the remainder of this post.
































I was reading on a different forum and someone mentioned once about what the best Celtic team since the 70s would be. The discussion came around, almost inevitably, to MON's 2002-2003 squad. Larsson could of course be on any team in any league in the world, with the likes of Hartson, Sutton, Thompson, Lennon, and Petrov all skilled at their job and never bullied. We regularly put 3 or 4 past the opposition and there is no need to remind everyone of reaching a European cup final. The following is a quote:

Talking of Martin O'Neill's great Celtic team from the 2002-3 season, I thought I'd look at their record in domestic matches and do a comparison with that of the current Rangers team (the "worst Rangers team since...", probably since their 9-in-a-row team).

I took Rangers' present domestic run of just one defeat in 47 games since they lost in extra time to Celtic in the Scottish League Cup Final last March.

I then compared this to the domestic record of MON's Celtic team (probably the best Celtic team since their 9-in-a-row team) from their UEFA Cup Final season plus the first two domestic games from 2003-4 (the season in which they knocked Barca out of the UEFA Cup) to make it up to the same number of games as Rangers' present run.

Awarding points for ALL games (including cup games), here are the records over their respective 47 game runs of the worst Rangers team since their 9IAR and the best Celtic team since their 9IAR:

Team…..……….…..P...W….D...L.....F…..A….Pts....GD
Celtic 2002-3……....47...37....5...5...118...32...116...+86
Rangers 2009-10.....47...35...11...1...101...29...116...+72

It makes sobering reading, I think.

I don't want to hear or read the term "worst Rangers team" again until such a time as they finishing 4th or lower in the SPL.

Here is my statement about MON's Celtic, with the reference to Larsson removed and changed to Rangers, and I honestly believe it hold up for either team.

I was reading on a different forum and someone mentioned once about what the best Rangers team since the 90s would be. The discussion came around, almost inevitably, to Walter's 2009-2010 squad. Larsson could of course be on any team in any league in the world, with the likes of Boyd, Boughera, Novo, Thomson, McGregor, and Davis all skilled at their job and never bullied. We regularly put 3 or 4 past the opposition and there is no need to remind everyone of reaching a European cup final*.

* that was two years ago, but I believe my point should still leave an impression, being practically the same team with the same manager.

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I voted yes because I was admittedly a member of the "how are we behind this lot" crew until I looked at the cold facts and took an impartial view on things.

Maybe not the worst, they were like us shite in Europe but better than us domestically and my opinion to that is we have Tony Mowbray and they have Walter Smith, a big difference.

Do you have any comment to the rest of the post? They did shite in Europe, but so did Celtic to miss the Champions League in 2002-2003 and drop into the UEFA Cup... the final of which Rangers also made it to in 2008 with much the same team as they have now.

Originally Posted by jaradthescot

Do you have any comment to the rest of the post? They did shite in Europe, but so did Celtic to miss the Champions League in 2002-2003 and drop into the UEFA Cup... the final of which Rangers also made it to in 2008 with much the same team as they have now.

I think its became easy to refer to them as ¨the worst etc. ¨, partly due to their financial position and not buying players or being able to offer contracts to existing, along with us having a very poor team win the spl three years in a row it is then easy to say if we won it with this team then they must be really bad.
In their favour, they are a ¨team¨ in every sense and are tremendously organised by a very astute manager.
Scottish football is also much poorer now than even 6 or 7 years ago, but its a good point jarad and also shows just how difficult it is to make comparisons between teams/players from different era`s

went for the sarcastic option

A think it is important to remeber that in the 2002-2003 season the spl was much better and rangers were much better then both sides finished on 97 points that season. And this rangers team is pretty much the same rangers team that made it to the uefa cup final. However this mis conception that rangers never payed a lot of money for there squad is wrong they payed 450,000 for papac they payed
£3m for davis they also payed £2m whittaker £2.25m McCulloch.
£2 million thomson. and then you add players like Bougherra £2.5 million £2 million for miller. £3m (plus alan gow) for lafferty So when you add it up rangers have payed £14.7million on 8 players this is not including fringe palyers bought so they have spent money.

We're struggling because of the strachan/mowbray transition,
not having a settled permanent squad is making the monkeys look good.

Saying that they are succeeding thanks to the players that got them to manchester is fair enough, but have we all forgotten how fucking boring rangers were that season? Grinding out results thanks to the tactical genius of walter and co - against teams like pana and sporting.
Now they're reduced to doing it against teams like killie and falkirk, and they're still praised to the rafters.
I voted 'no' in the poll, by the way.
They ain't the best, they ain't the worst, but let's remember they are the likeliest to go tits up in the close season.

In the last year and a half they have been a far better organised team than us, and under the circumstances I have to give Smith alot of credit even though we surely helped.

I will give a further comment if Mowbray is in charge next season, it will be another loooooooooooooooooooong season!

Originally Posted by hubert

I will give a further comment if Mowbray is in charge next season, it will be another loooooooooooooooooooong season!

Hope next season is loooooooooooonger than this one.