Former Rangers striker Kenny Miller believes that the SPL title is bound for Ibrox because of Celtic’s complaints about officials.
Speaking the day after his old side lost 1-0 to Hearts at Tynecastle the £50,000/week striker revealed that the Rangers players believe that any referee complaints from Celtic are a sign that the hoops can’t handle the pressure.
“When the Gers boys see Celtic getting more and more wound up about referees and decisions against them, you begin to think ‘We’ve got them’,” Miller told the News of the World.
“The more they moan, the more you know they are struggling. At Rangers we knew, the more noise that came out of Celtic, the more we could turn the screw because the pressure was getting to them.
“When you have that negative mentality it does have an affect on you. At the end of the day, if you are an Old Firm player you have to go out and win games, not make excuses.
“But if you blame it on somebody else every time you lose, it just smacks of desperation.”
[poll id= “28”]
Miller’s last derby match as a Rangers player was earlier this month when a double from Georgios Samaras gave Celtic the points. Analysis of that match showed that he touched the ball four times during the second half.
Whilst Neil Lennon has highlighted honest mistakes that have gone against Celtic this season the Bursaspor ace reminded readers that Rangers also on the wrong end of decisions.
Looking back to a visit to Aberdeen in August 2008 Miller recalled: “Do you think Rangers players don’t remember decisions that go against them? You just don’t hear us going on about it.
“In my first year back I remember DaMarcus Beasley’s ‘goal’ against Aberdeen at Pittodrie being ruled out for offside in the last minute of the game. We would have won 2-1 that day, instead of drawing 1-1.
“Even though that decision came at the start of the season, it could still have cost us the league.
“It was never offside, it was clearly a good goal and that one decision could have cost us the title.
“Who knows what would have happened to Rangers if we had lost the league that season and the Champions League money which went with it? But we never went on and on about it.
“No one called for anyone’s head, no one claimed the world was against us – we just got on with it and won the league.
“The other week we had our Scottish Cup tie with Killie switched from a Saturday to a Monday night and couldn’t get a midweek SPL fixture played because of it.
“It meant Celtic could have gone ten points clear of us and left us to play catch-up with a big backlog of fixtures to make up.
“But we never moaned about anyone handing Celtic a big advantage by getting their points on the board, even though it would have given them a huge psychological advantage and heaped more pressure on us.
“All of this talk about conspiracies and ridiculous claims that refs are bending over backwards to help Rangers out of their financial troubles is just nonsense.”
Miller of course is uniquely qualified to discuss and compare both teams having recently won SPL titles and played in the Champions League in both sides of the city.
In five Champions League appearances for Gordon Strachan he scored three goals, under Walter Smith he scored once in 11 Champions League matches- ironically against Bursanspor.
Ki targets Asian Cup final place
Follow Video Celts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube
[bet_365 type=’generic’ size=’468′ af_code=’365_050711′]
“The Gers” is it Josh? lol!