Chris Sutton hits back sarcastically at Michael Beale over Rangers v Celtic claim
Chris Sutton has reacted sarcastically to Michael Beale’s claim that Rangers would have beaten Celtic to last season’s title had Steven Gerrard stayed.
The QPR boss left for Aston Villa exactly a year ago when the Premier League club came calling for the former Liverpool captain, with the Light Blues four points ahead at the top of the SPFL.
He told the Currie Club on BT Sport that he “definitely” felt they would go on and win a second successive title from that position, having had a strong record in recent Old Firm derbies, but Sutton was unimpressed with the idea.
Responding on his personal Twitter account to the former Ibrox assistant’s claims he wrote sarcastically: “Yes they would have won another treble under Gerrard no doubt…”
Giovanni van Bronckhorst took over this time last year, ultimately won the Scottish Cup and made it to the Europa League final, but faltered in the league and conceded the title to Celtic by four points.
The Hoops are currently seven points clear at the top in the current campaign, with massive pressure building on the Dutchman.
Change of fortunes
Sutton might not like it but there’s a lot to be said for Beale’s stance, since the hard work appeared to have been done in overturning the dominance at the top of Scottish football.
That it has turned back again so quickly with van Bronckhorst in charge is a large part of what is being held against him currently, with his job hanging in the balance.
The record in Old Firm derbies has been pretty awful since Gerrard and Beale left, with the first one after the change a devastating 3-0 thrashing at Celtic Park, with an even worse 4-0 loss there this season, with just the extra time win in the cup semi-final last season going in Rangers’ favour.
There is increasingly heavy speculation that Beale will be the man to take over if the current boss is sacked, with the club now out of Europe in miserable fashion and struggling to keep pace in the title race.
It gets overlooked now but the 55th title was more than just another title, in that it represented a return to the top from the lower leagues and administration.
Arguably the heavy win in van Bronckhorst’s first Old Firm is what gave the psychological edge back to Ange Postecoglou’s side, and while plenty of fans are still unhappy with how Gerrard and company departed, there wasn’t a huge amount of hope on the green side of Glasgow at the time that they were about to snatch supremacy right back.
In other Rangers news, two managers with a lot of English Premier League experience has been named as “serious contenders” for the Ibrox job.