The Rangers squad might not quite be at 100% for the trip to Parkhead on 2/2/22 but fans still have every right to be confident ahead of the rearranged derby.
Celtic look likely to be missing their best three players this season in Callum McGregor, Tom Rogic and Kyogo Furuhashi and we will have Kemar Roofe, Scott Arfield and Joe Aribo all back. Filip Helander and Ryan Jack also have an outside chance of being involved, just having them back in training will have given the rest of the squad a boost though.
I do have one concern though, and it may be proven to be completely unfounded, but the performance and tactics employed at Pittodrie against Aberdeen were so passive that we never looked like scoring again.
We we’re playing against a defence that had Ross McCrorie and Davis Bates in it and we let them off the hook, we shouldn’t have given them any time to settle on the ball instead they had the freedoms of the city. Every time we pressed them we caused them problems and threatened to get in behind them, this Rangers team is at its best when it wins the ball higher up the park.
I just hope we don’t adopt similar tactics at Parkhead if we do we will be playing straight into their hands.
The next two games give us a great chance to get our mojo back and to get key players like Arfield, Aribo and Roofe back into the team before the Old Firm and to put Pittodrie behind us in more ways than one – hopefully Gio has done the same.