Celtic 3-0 Rangers: Flat

Start a Rangers blog they said, it will be fun they said. Well, I said, to myself. How wrong I was.

My match preview yesterday was short, I was trying to fit as much optimism in as I could. When I started writing more, it was all about the weaknesses of the team and I was trying not to come across too negative for my first piece of Old Firm coverage.

Really that's exactly what I should have been, because it would have been spot on. Rangers slumped to another Old Firm defeat after a typically limp performance.

In terms of positives, the first 10 minutes were good and then Celtic scored an offside goal and it felt like the players decided they had to abandon that game plan. Soon enough we were actually 1 down and I'd love to say I felt like we were going to equalise given the chances we'd created in the first 10 minutes, but I feared the worst.

The rest of the game went as expected and doesn't need any kind of play-by-play coverage.

Butland looked worryingly weak for the second from distance, he really needs to get back to his best soon given his downturn in form since the rumours of his England call up.

Overall it wasn't good enough, as we've come to expect from this manager and this group of players in Old Firm games. It didn't take much for the game to look like any of the last 7/8 games in this fixture and that's obviously a worry.

Clearly the window wasn't good enough despite the late scramble, I mentioned that it felt like we were still a bit short in a few positions. That could be seen in stark terms yesterday as Sterling looked okay off the ball, Barron not the worst on it, but it would be nice to have a player with both of those qualities to play the 6 role which is so clearly important in this system.

Clement has certainly been sold short but I'm not sure it really looks like any of the players want to fight for him. His interview afterwards was at near parody levels, I don't think Caixinha actually said anything as ridiculous as implying the Ross County game was our "best result in years".

Really hope that Bajrami is the Albanian Messi or this could be a long old season. Just thinking of Pedro now, what's the opposite of "The dog barks, but the caravan keeps rolling"? The dog has savaged the caravan and the people inside it and set it on fire? Maybe that should have been the article title.

International break to come, maybe I'll do some international content, that could be a fun distraction as we watch the traditionally successful nation of checks notes Scotland... maybe not then.

Have a good week everyone, let's try not to be sad for the next nearly 2 weeks until club football is back.