Former Celtic star John Hartson believes Rangers got too cocky in the wake of December’s victory at Ibrox, handing an eighth title in a row to the Hoops, as reported by The Scottish Sun.
The 1-0 defeat was a hard one to take for Celtic supporters but it did spark a prolonged period of excellent domestic form, which hasn’t really ceased from January to now.
Brendan Rodgers and Neil Lennon have guided the club to 12 wins from 13 since the return from the winter break, drawing a solitary match against in-form Aberdeen.
Rangers’ season on the other hand has fallen to pieces, dumped out of the Scottish Cup and on the brink of conceding the so-called ‘title race.
Hartson reckons it all stems from the aftermath to that Ibrox clash, telling The Scottish Sun:
Rangers got carried away by that result. If you look at the results since that win at Ibrox, I don’t know if they took their eye off the ball.
I don’t know if they put so much into that game and got the result, then went away on the winter break and felt they had Celtic’s number.
You have to ask, where’s it gone? Steven Gerrard must wonder what happened. Something’s gone wrong. They were almost challenging after that win, but they have fallen back and gone out of the Scottish Cup too.
I said Celtic would win the league by 15 points and it looks like they are on track to do that.
The 15 points prediction would have seemed outlandish in December but certainly looks realistic now.
A win for Neil Lennon and his team on Sunday would send us 13 points clear at the top of the table, with Rangers likely to drop even more points in the coming weeks when forced to play a gauntlet of matches against the top six clubs.
They spent lots of money and attracted some high profile names to Ibrox this season, in an attempt to chase us down, but ultimately this season will go down alongside the recent failures of Pedro Caixinha and Mark Warburton.