Jonty Banks

Tue 28 February 2023 9:10, UK

Michael Laudrup believes Rangers winger Fashion Sakala looked silly after following his strong pre-match words with a “poor” performance in the ViaPlay Cup Final defeat to Celtic.

In the build-up to the Hampden Park showdown on Sunday afternoon (26 February) Sakala refused to name the Hoops in the press conference and instead referred to them as “the other mob”.

Writing for the Scottish Daily Mail in his weekly column (Tuesday 28 February, page 71), Laudrup cringed at the actions of the Zambian, who was poor for Michael Beale’s side in the 2-1 defeat and failed to back up his words with the performance to match.

“I think another lesson was the one painfully learned by Fashion Sakala,” he wrote.

“He spoke a lot before the game, saying Rangers were better than Celtic but didn’t back it up at all. His performance was poor.

“In the end, there wasn’t much behind his talk. He fell flat on his face, unfortunately, and so did Rangers. His words look silly today.”

Oh dear

Sakala couldn’t have performed much worse after angering Celtic fans in the build-up to the match. The winger was pretty anonymous during his 84-minute stint on the pitch at Hampden Park and failed to carve open any opportunities of note on the right wing.

Although the Zambian may not have meant to rile up the Hoops with his “other mob” comment, he actually only added further fuel to the Celtic fire. Right from the first whistle, the Gers were second best in every department, as Ange Postecolgou’s side dictated proceedings with ease.

The worrying fact for Beale going forward will be the dominance of Celtic in midfield, where they won the battle against John Lundstram, Glen Kamara and Malik Tillman.

The Gers boss will take a lot of lessons out of his first final as a manager, and the first of these might be telling his players to keep their mouths shut in the build-up to the game.

In other Rangers news, the fans must do more to get Douglas Park and Ross Wilson out of the club because enough is enough.