This title will be as good as any before, says proud Rangers manager Walter Smith

• Rangers manager Walter Smith and assistant Ally McCoist watch over Rangers training yesterday

For the second weekend running, they are now at the stage where the retention of the championship could be complete before they play again. Celtic's late comeback at home to Hibernian prevented the realisation of that possibility seven days ago, but now Neil Lennon's team need to win at Dundee United in tomorrow's early kick-off.

If Celtic lose or draw at Tannadice against opponents who are still gunning for second place, Rangers will become champions while warming up at Easter Road. To an extent, it would be appropriate if they do retain the title by default, given the pitiful lack of a challenge from their Glasgow rivals.

But the story of the season is as much about Rangers' virtues as it is about the failings of others. At their best, they have systematically dismantled those teams which have harboured even the slightest hopes of mounting a challenge.

They were on fire immediately before and after Christmas, for example, dishing out merciless 6-1 and 7-1 thrashings to Motherwell and Dundee United respectively. Three days before the latter of those two Ibrox games, they visited Easter Road and won 4-1.

Such forays into showmanship have been rare, but when they have not been scoring goals by the barrel-loads they have displayed other virtues. Above all, fortitude.

Manager Walter Smith has been working for some time without a contract, and with a fraction of the budget he enjoyed during his first spell in charge of the club. The players, like the coaching staff, do not know who will own the club next season or what financial restrictions will be in place.

Rangers' monetary troubles are relative, of course – they are troubles which most other clubs in Scotland would love to have – but they could nonetheless have had an unsettling effect on the football side. Instead, the team have been able to put them to one side, and concentrate on winning games.

Prevented from buying a player since Maurice Edu arrived in the summer of 2008, Smith has got the best out of a squad who, compared to their predecessors, are blessed with a most modest talent. It is partly for that reason that he is as proud of their achievements as he is of the more eye-catching feats of the team he took charge of during his original tenure.

"They have been enjoyable – it's always difficult to say more enjoyable," Smith said yesterday when asked how the trophies he has lifted since returning to Ibrox at the start of 2007 compared to his earlier haul. "I'm fortunate to be able to make a comparison. A lot of people don't get an opportunity to compare success. If they get a bit of success it comes to them and then maybe disappears, but I've been lucky enough to be in a situation where we've won a few.

"But if you can make a comparison, I enjoyed last year's success, for instance, as much as I did any that I've had previously. And I'm sure if we can retain the championship on Sunday, then I'll feel exactly the same way."

The emphasis remains on the if. Neil Lennon asked last week if he was the only person who thought Celtic could still win the title, and the answer appears to be no. Smith, too, will not regard the league race as a foregone conclusion.

"When there's an opportunity to win a championship there's always a wee bit of nerves," he admitted. "And there's always a thought at the back of your head 'if things go wrong . . . '

"We've been living with that it seems for the last six weeks or so, but now is the first opportunity that we've had to go and win. I think if we do, that will complete a three-year period with six trophies, and that will mean a lot to everybody here to do that.

"Because we've worked under different circumstances from a lot of the previous occasions when I've been fortunate enough to win a championship. So hopefully we can do that on Sunday."

"When you get to this stage, everybody always asks you questions pertaining to you winning the championship as if they take it for read that's going to happen. We'll never be like that."

If his players have surprised him last season, they have perhaps done so no more than he has surprised himself. Certainly, when he returned to Ibrox he did not expect to be still in charge, never mind still winning trophies, come the spring of 2010.

"I didn't think I would be here that long. When David Murray asked me to come back my agreement with him was I would come back until the club was sold – he was going to put the club up for sale. And here we are, three and a half years on, on the brink of winning back-to-back championships."

Smith will know the result from Tannadice tomorrow before his own game kicks off, but so far as is possible he will accord it only minimal importance. "The focus for us will be to try and make sure we take up our own challenge, and that is to win the game and retain the championship. It's in our own hands to do that. It will be our performance – or Hibs' performance – that will dictate which way that'll go.

"That's how we'll go about it."

It is the way they have consistently gone about it in a league campaign which has so far produced only two defeats. They have barely faltered so far, and Smith aims to ensure they will not do so now.

FLASHBACK

Premier League championships have been clinched at Easter Road by the visiting side four times in the past 35 years, with Rangers responsible for two of those triumphs. Tomorrow, they could make it a hat-trick of title celebrations in Leith…1975: RANGERS

Rangers halted Celtic's attempt at an unprecedented ten titles in a row with a 1-1 draw on 29 March. They took the title with four games to spare. Hibs went into the lead, and Sandy Jardine missed a penalty before former Easter Road favourite Colin Stein got on the end of a cross from Bobby McKean to bullet a header into the top corner and seal the championship for Jock Wallace's side. Hibs actually finished the season's runners-up with Celtic third.1977: CELTIC

Among Celtic's ranks on 17 April, 1977 was former Hibs captain Pat Stanton. Celtic required only a point to confirm themselves as champions, but there were no cameras at the game, at the insistence of Hibs chairman Tom Hart. It didn't stop Jock Stein's team winning 1-0 thanks to a 63rd minute goal from Joe Craig. Celtic would go on to stretch that gap to nine points at the end of the campaign from Rangers 1980: ABERDEEN

Alex Ferguson's first title was sealed in emphatic fashion on 3 May as Aberdeen blew away a sorry Hibs team 5-0 in front of a massive travelling support who had headed down from the north-east. Goals from Steve Archibald and Andy Watson within a minute of each other set the ball rolling midway through the first half in the Easter Road sunshine, and an Ian Scanlon double and Mark McGhee goal sent the title to Pittodrie.2005: RANGERS

The most dramatic of title triumphs unfolded at Easter Road as Rangers, needing Celtic to slip-up at Motherwell, took full advantage of their rivals' incredible late collapse at Fir Park, to get the win they needed to snatch the title on 22 May. Nacho Novo put Rangers ahead in the 59th minute, although that seemed to be in vain with Celtic still winning 1-0. However, when news unfolded that Scott McDonald had equalised and then scored the winner for Motherwell there was bedlam in the away end as Rangers realised they had somehow won a last-gasp championship.