Where Ange Postecoglou ranks among Celtic and Rangers title turnarounds when compared to Steven Gerrard, Martin O'Neill and Wim Jansen
Never before have the winners of the championship overturned a 25-point deficit from the previous campaign; never before have they been so comprehensively remade by an unfancied managerial appointment that nine of their first choice XI arrived in the previous 10 months.
Considering that Postecoglou and his, largely, newbies were ranged against a Rangers that hadn’t lost a league game the entire previous season, there has been a rush to paint this reversal of fortunes as beyond any witnessed in the 37 years the Glasgow behemoths have monopolised the Scottish game’s most prized silverware.
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Hide AdIt is understandable for such a claim to be made, but it is contestable. For one, there was a freakish element to how the championship panned out in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions of 2020-21, which led to all games being played behind closed doors. Without question, Steven Gerrard’s triumphant team were phenomenal. However, there were so many abnormal situations that handicapped their rivals in chasing a record 10th title - denied key personnel for crucial games through where they sat on buses, planes and even simply when on a Playstation - the gap between the two clubs was exaggerated by circumstances. Moreover, although Postecoglou was shorn of three Celtic mainstays as Kristoffer Ajer, Odsonne Eduoard and Ryan Christie departed from the paper-thin squad, in replacing them he had a spending power that outstripped that of Rangers. As well as the country’s biggest salary bill…even if only 27% higher than their bitter rivals.
Financial advantages didn’t favour the victors in the previous wholly-unexpected title turnarounds over the past three decades. Case in point is offered up by the fact that Celtic even had to produce the extraordinary to chase down Rangers this time around. For Gerrard and his Ibrox team looked utterly lost when the Covid-19 shutdown forced the 2019-20 campaign to end prematurely. Celtic, then 13 points ahead, looked set to stretch that lead to approaching the 20-point mark as they landed a ninth straight league success. Rangers’ subsequent title rampage, without even matching Celtc’s £12m transfer outlay that summer, represented a startling feat. Even set against an unprecedented backdrop.
The same is true for Wim Jansen masterminding Celtic’s toppling of Rangers’ when their ancient adversaries appeared unstoppable in their pursuit of a 10th title, back in 1997-98. A fact reflected in one newspaper at that time setting out three Rangers teams good enough to win the championship following the club’s then record £12m outlay on new recruits to bolster a squad with which Walter Smith had already crafted a hardened team that so long had proved untouchable in title terms.
The certainities expressed as to the outcome of the Premier Division that followed owed much to the disarray into which Celtic plunged their first overseas manager. The Dutchman had been brought in late - and to much derision - before being forced to recruit a raft of players with the proceeds from the sale of playing jewels in Paulo Di Canio, Jorge Cadete and Pierre van Hooijdonk. The Three Amigos, as archly daubed by Celtic owner Fergus McCann, were a trio who won few friends with their destablising attempts to extort improved contracts. When Celtic lost their opening two league games, just as with Postecoglou’s side dropping 11 points across their first seven encounters in the campaign just concluded, all seemed lost. Not least because much-trumpeted new arrival Henrik Larsson’s first impact in the Scottish game had been to pass the ball to Chic Charnley to score for Hibs as Celtic were beaten at Easter Road. Jansen’s alchemy that followed, underpinned by Larsson’s supreme brilliance, made for a rags-to-riches championship triumph that seemed to defy all probability.
Postecoglou, thanks to his unerring success in the transfer market, matched it for inconceivability piloting Celtic to the giddiest domestic heights this season. Yet, there remains one title transformation that eclipses the Australian’s marvels of this season. It remains jaw-dropping Martin O’Neill could walk into a Celtic obliterated by Rangers in losing the 1999-2000 championship by a 21-point margin, and by the next summer had blown away such blues through claiming the title - as part of the club’s first treble in 31 years - courtesy of a thumping 16-point advantage.
The backdrop, and the eye-watering sums involved, demand it be considered the ultimate footballing resurrection. Smarting from Jansen’s halting of the Rangers juggernaut, the Ibrox club’s owner David Murray pulled out every financial stop to prevent such a scenario coming to pass again. He did so by lavishing oodles of cash on manager Dick Advocaat after enticing him to Scotland in the summer of 1998. In the two title-winning seasons that followed, Rangers forked out £38m net to upholster their squad as Celtic struggled to keep pace, despite parting with the not inconsiderable sum of £19m. Rangers’ extravagance was monumental not merely in Scottish terms, but across the entire UK football domain. In 1999, as Manchester United were clinching a Champions League, title and League Cup treble, their wage bill did not match Rangers’ £31m total. O’Neill’s player salary budget for his bid merely to restore respectability to Celtic was around half of that commanded by Advocaat. Although the Irishman invested heavily to acquire such as Chris Sutton, Alan Thompson, Neil Lennon and Joos Valgaeren, Celtic’s net outlay in the transfer market across the campaign was £13m - dwarved by the £25m with which Rangers parted in their desperation to repel the advances of O’Neill’s team. They were utterly powerless to do so, making the flipping of fortunes between the foes in 2000-01 still in a league of its own.
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