And now the Glasgow giants are back in each other’s face again. This could get grisly, but let’s hope there’s a modicum of football played at Hampden.
Old Firm games of recent vintage have thrown up some belters – Rangers beating Celtic 3-2 at Celtic Park in March, Celtic beating Rangers on penalties at Hampden in December after drawing 3-3.
That 0-0 at Ibrox was a blight. The only memorable thing about it was how utterly forgettable it was. Rangers ran around like mad dogs in a meathouse and got a draw having just conceded six to Brugge.
Celtic passed backwards, hesitant and unthreatening having just been knocked out of the Champions League by Kairat Almaty. It was the third time in four matches where they failed to score.
The game produced a combined xG of 0.32. We can’t be certain – stats vary – but there’s a serious chance that this is the lowest xG ever recorded for a game in Britain since records began.
It certainly felt like one of the most stultifyingly dull encounters in the modern history of the fixture.
This game remains a curiosity. Celtic lorded it over Rangers in the league table last season, beating them by 17 points, outscoring over the course of the Premiership campaign by 112 goals to 80, out-defending them by conceding 26 goals to 41, with a goal difference of plus-86 for Celtic and plus-39 for Rangers.
And yet, in Old Firm games, none of this dominance was reflected. In the four games in the league, there was a 1-1 draw, a 3-2 Rangers win at Celtic Park, a 3-0 Rangers win at Ibrox and a 3-0 Celtic win at Celtic Park.
The League Cup final ended 3-3 after extra time, Celtic winning it in a penalty shootout. So, including the 0-0 earlier this season, in the last six meetings – two victories for Rangers, two victories for Celtic (counting the shootout) and two draws. In goals scored, Rangers shaded the six games 10-9.
The concept of form going out of the window in derby matches is a bit of a cliche, but sometimes cliches can be true. Nothing else explains why Celtic, so much better than Rangers last season, found it so fiendishly difficult to get the better of them.
So much has changed at these clubs in recent weeks, but some things never change. The emotion, the bonkerdom, the ridiculous high of winning this game and the awful low of losing.
Both clubs have set an impressively high bar for mayhem this season. Don’t be surprised if that bar goes higher still with so much on the line at Hampden.
