Barry Ferguson believes that the form book goes out the window in ‘Old Firm’ clashes.
The Clyde boss picked up £2.5m in EBT payments to keep him at Ibrox with similar schemes used to entice players to challenge Celtic.
On Saturday Mark Warburton put out a team built from loans from mysterious benefactors in Hong Kong with the outcome of the match a brutal reality check for followers of the tribute act.
The reality of a team from Ibrox without the staunch support of the Bank of Scotland and paying tax in the same way as their opponents is likely to be a sobering one for their supporters.
As someone said after the game on Saturday- this isn’t the end, it’s only the beginning.
In his time warp at the Daily Record however Ferguson took a different approach to the match, clutching at the old form book cliché to offer comfort ahead of Saturday’s visit to the champions of Scotland.
He told his readers: “Celtic will go in to this one as overwhelming favourites and I get that because they’ve had a really good start to the league campaign.
“But I know from experience that form is often overrated where this game is concerned.
“I lost count of the times we would go into a derby after some shaky results and come away with the win. Likewise, I lost many of them that we were expected to win.
“I must admit also, I can’t say I really enjoyed playing in them and I regret that now. At the time, it was all about the fear. If we were 3-0 up with 10 minutes to go I might allow myself to enjoy the moment but most of the time my stomach was churning like a cement mixer. There was no time to look around and to take it all in.”
On Saturday the form book was exactly that, form. It didn’t get torn up or thrown out the window. Celtic played to 80% of their potential and made the newly promoted club suffer.
It wasn’t the biggest match of Celtic’s week- it was the biggest match of Sevco’s history.
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