Lorenzo Amuruso has claimed that Steven Gerrard’s side have shown that they can be ‘much much better than Celtic on the pitch’.
The Italian spent five years at Ibrox at the turn of the Century, losing 10-in-a-row then experiencing some domestic success under Dick Advocaat and Alex McLeish.
Despite the constant pre-season hype Celtic have swept the board for the last four seasons with Neil Lennon picking up on the standards set under Brendan Rodgers.
In the season just ended Celtic won 26 out of 30 SPFL matches. That sort of consistency is hard to match with the challenge from Ibrox wilting after the winter break with Celtic stretching their lead at the top of the table by 11 points from 10 matches.
Next season Celtic go looking for their 10th successive title with Amoruso warning the current crop of Ibrox flops that they can’t fail again.
The Italian told the Daily Record:
Everyone will want to stop Celtic next season but what is more important is what Rangers do about it.
This season they showed that they can be much, much better than Celtic on the pitch. They only lost this league because of how they performed against the other clubs.
Beating Celtic is important. But it’s not worth much if you drop points against teams like Hearts, Kilmarnock and Motherwell. The mentality has to be ‘we’re playing against Celtic every f****** weekend!’.
I thought the win at Celtic Park in December was the big turning point for us but they came back after the break and something was broken. I hope the bad experiences they had of dropping points against the other teams will teach the players how to be winners as that’s what you need if you want to be at Rangers.
James Tavernier is expected to captain Gerrard’s men again next season despite expressing his fear in the club programme of being favourites going into matches against Hamilton, Hearts and Kilmarnock.
