Rangers have seemed to have a game in hand for months now with Dundee standing in the way of top spot in the Scottish Premiership.
Philippe Clement will have been pleased with the way his squad reacted to coming from 2-0 down against Celtic, however, the Gers boss won’t want to ever see a repeat of the first 45 minutes.
The trouble with Dundee’s pitch is well documented, but is there a genuine doubt about Rangers game being called off?
Rangers facing repeat of Dundee drama amid Met Office warning
Motherwell were made to wait until the last minute and were far from happy, the surface, arguably, was no worse than when our fixture a few weeks ago was postponed.
Stewart Kettlewell went as far as to suggest that player safety was an issue, as did his club in a strongly worded statement.
Since then, the rain hasn’t really eased off so, despite Celtic’s best attempts, the Dens Park surface is not going to be pretty.
The Met Office have issued a weather warning for Tuesday with rain to continue throughout Wednesday too.
However, all of this is irrelevant, the game, under any conditions, will go ahead.
Why?
Because it has to.
SPFL has nowhere to go with Rangers v Dundee problem
Look at Scotland’s farcical win over Georgia when the ball couldn’t be dribbled and clearly had an influence on the standard of play.
It was a swamp with visible puddles all over the park and the ball not bouncing.
That game, as does ours with Dundee, had to be played.
There is no more space in the SPFL calendar to fit it in.
All the games on Saturday will be played at the same time to determine the outcome of the split.
Motherwell and Hibernian, who play each other, can both catch Dundee if results go their way.
And we all know how Scottish football loves sporting integrity.
As Rangers showed in the second half against Celtic, every game now will be about mentality and getting the job done, and it will be no different against Dundee.
They are on a good run of form, Tony Docherty just got manager of the month, but Philippe Clement will need to make sure that from now, until kick-off, that the focus is entirely on getting results.
The weather will be poor, the pitch will be poor, and Dundee will be right up for it given that they can qualify for the top six and a few games that will fill their stadium instead of mid-table obscurity.
Title races are never pretty, don’t expect Wednesday night to be either.
