Andy Gray has warned Celtic that this season’s title challenge from Ibrox is based on the feeling that they should already be SPFL champions.
Celtic won last season’s title by nine points despite losing their manager with a third of the season left to play and referees failing to send off FIVE players in matches against the hoops that brought about retrospective suspensions.
Gray watched last season’s action from the beIN studio in Diha but was in Glasgow over the weekend to enjoy a spectacular 4-0 hammering of French giants Marseilles.
After the match he enjoyed a lengthy chat with Steven Gerrard and Gary McAllister before racing off to spill the beans with Keith Jackson
Reporting on the post match discussion at Ibrox the Daily Record reports Gray explaining:
There is definitely a title push to come. When you think, had Rangers beaten the teams they should have beaten last season – and didn’t drop so many stupid points – then they probably would have won the title this year.
That’s the thing that will annoy him. It was games we should have won. We drew a couple at home when we should have been taking three points. We lost a couple of away games and had a terrible record against Kilmarnock all season. Alfredo Morelos getting sent off so often cost us seven or eight points. All these things could have turned the title our way.
So there was a title bid this year that just kind of fell away. But this season? I think it will definitely happen as does Steven, Gary Mac and all the backroom staff.
After last season’s ‘title near miss’ Gerrard has added eight new players to his squad with only Lee Wallace departing.
Confidence of a title triumph at Ibrox is sky high but that’s not reflected by the bookies who have Celtic as odds on favourites to win a ninth successive title.
NB If Dundee United had scored four more goals in the 1974 Scottish Cup Final Gray would have been a Scottish Cup winner, if Rangers had scored twice more in the 1989 Scottish Cup Final Gray would have been a Scottish Cup winner.