Less than a week after drawing with Hibs Barry Ferguson is claiming that the current Ibrox squad are as good as the EBT fuelled stars recruited by Dick Advocaat and Walter Smith!
It seems that a 4-0 win away to Willem II in the third qualifying round of the Europa League has got the Kelty Hearts boss carried away.
Mister Gerrard has yet to lift a real trophy in over two years in charge during which he has signed 36 players.
Celtic have cruised to two SPFL titles while the opportunity of cup glory has been ended twice by Aberdeen and once each by Celtic and Hearts.
Advocaat was able to bring in Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer within three months of a hammering from Celtic while Smith signed Maurice Edu, Pedro Mendes and Steve Davis within a week of being knocked out of the UEFA Cup by Kaunus.
With the lure of huge off-shore trusts and side letters making the club liable for any tax claims Advocaat and Smith racked up the trophies thanks to a scam that Dave Murray admitted allowed the old club to buy players that they wouldn’t normally be able to afford.
Reflecting on the glory night in Holland, Ferguson told Daily Record readers:
They have the flair and confidence of Advocaat’s team and the spirit and hunger of Walter’s. And that gives them half a chance.
Winning 4-0 in Holland is the kind of result that makes people stand up and take notice. That’s certainly what it did to me because I’d have taken a 1-0 win before a ball was kicked.
Yes, the first 10-15 minutes were a bit tricky but that’s normally the case away from home in Europe. But when they settled into the game they began to look comfortable and as soon as they won the penalty I turned to my son and told him ‘this could end up being three or four here’.
It’s not that Willem II are a bad side. Even if they were defensively poor, you don’t qualify for Europe from the Dutch top flight if you can’t play a bit up the other end so I enjoyed watching what Rangers did to them all over the park.
Later in the column Ryan Kent is described as ‘looking every inch a £20m player’. Ferguson can enjoy watching Gerrard’s European heroes in action at Motherwell tomorrow in the knowledge that they have won three of their last 10 away matches in the SPFL.
