Dave King was never far from the headlines in his tenure as Rangers chairman and one famous statement he made is starting to come to fruition.
Soon after appointing Steven Gerrard in 2018, the South African-based businessman made a bold claim that it wouldn’t take much for Celtic’s dominance to be toppled, as reported at the time by The Sun:
“We appoint a manager who can win games, with more resources, and we take one league title away from Celtic. We only need one league title, we don’t need two or three. We need one. Once we take one away, it’s like a pack of cards.
“Celtic’s cost structure is more like we were ten years ago.
“We needed Champions League football, and if we went into the Europa League we were in trouble because the cost structure was so high.
“Take that away for one season and it will change the numbers on the Celtic side very quickly.
“Celtic have the comfort levels we once had of knowing we were going to get Champions League money.
“We have to take that away from them and hopefully we have started that process last Friday with the appointment of Steven Gerrard.”
Although Rangers haven’t won the title, the “house of cards” is well and truly starting to collapse, despite only losing two domestic games in 2020, the Celtic management and squad needed a police escort out of Parkhead on Sunday after losing to Ross County in the league cup.
But for the sale of Kieran Tierney they would have made a loss of £25million last year, another point that King was right on, they need to sell players – and for big transfer fees – just to break even.
Nothing is won in December but the pressure currently being applied on Celtic by Rangers has highlighted more than a few cracks, if this is how they are reacting now, imagine if we win the one title that King said would break them.