Hubris Column: Three positives to take from Celtic 5-1 Rangers

The title race still probably isn’t over

It’s early, and things aren’t exactly looking too rosy, but Mark Warburton surely must have figured out a few things by now. If he’s a football purist, then he shouldn’t be picking Joey Barton based upon his name (in the future, as making such a big call was most unlikely to happen today, with Jordan Rossiter injured.) He must have realised that last season’s plan is superior and that the younger players, Jordan Rossiter and Josh Windass, are the best-suited to fitting into it. And he must have realised that he absolutely needs to sort the defence out - do it in January.

We weren’t that far away today, despite the scoreline. A daft substitution followed by a moment of lunacy from Philippe Senderos contributed to an overall collapse, and there’s not much here to suggest we can’t beat them at Ibrox. It’s not over yet - but Warburton needs to stop this shite immediately.

We have a much deeper squad than Celtic do

Options that could have put together a better team today, perhaps, but it’s notable that Celtic’s bench is a lot worse than ours. That hasn’t told at all so far, but it very easily could over the course of the season. Other than Patrick Roberts, Celtic’s attacking options off the bench were pretty grim - Gary Mackay-Steven is still there, really? In contrast, we had Michael O’Halloran, Martyn Waghorn, Harry Forrester and Andy Halliday to pick from. We do have a lot of gamechangers here, if we start using them correctly.

Josh Windass looked very good

Particularly considering how little he’s played, Windass stepped up today and looked very good. Those kind of signings seem to be what our management team do best. This window looks like we’ve made a total shambles of it in terms of getting the team ready to compete this season, but even if Barton turns out to be a sucking wound on the wage bill for his entire Rangers career, this window could still be very fondly remembered for Windass, Rossiter, and possibly Crooks if he turns out to be any good. Garner, well, he scored, so we’ll give him a generous pass mark for today. The less said about the rest, the better.