Signing off the season with a double is the perfect end to what has been a bit of a turbulent first season at Celtic on Brendan Rodgers’ return to the club.
The Celtic boss has had a lot to deal with this season, both on and off the park, but despite that, he has emerged victorious with the league title and Scottish Cup tucked away in the Parkhead trophy cabinet.
Now, I’ll get to what Rodgers has had to deal with later in this article but at this point, I think it’s best to put out there what Rangers striker, Cyriel Dessers, thinks about the gap between Celtic and the Ibrox club.
Dessers explains why ‘the gap is not that big’
I’ll not bother with the big build-up to his comments but Dessers was clearly not thinking straight when he said the following about how far ahead Celtic are of Rangers.
Dessers said [Daily Mirror print edition page 45], “If you look at the five games between the teams this season the gap is not that big.
“Everybody has seen that. But there is still something about these games. We didn’t win any of them this season.
“But on the other hand the performance that we had on Saturday and the game plan that we had worked.
“It was good and that’s something to build on, especially in these head-to-head games.”
Let’s get into it then shall we?
The gap between Celtic and Rangers is bigger than Dessers realises
Let’s start with the five games between both clubs as that seems to be the Rangers striker’s reference point here.
In the first Glasgow Derby at Ibrox Celtic went to Rangers and grabbed a 1-0 win without Reo Hatate and Cameron Carter-Vickers in the starting lineup.
At the end of that game, Rodgers’ back line was Anthony Ralston, Gustaf Lagerbielke, Liam Scales and Alexandro Bernabei.
In the following 2-1 win at Celtic Park in December, Rodgers went into the game again without Carter-Vickers and Hatate.
Mikey Johnston, Maik Nawrocki, Hyoengyu Oh, David Turnbull and Liel Abada all finished that game with Hatate as an unused substitute. Three out of those five finishers are no longer at the club.
The 3-3 Ibrox draw that Rangers morally won was down to the fact that Celtic (without Callum McGregor starting) failed to take their chances and should have been out of sight in 45 blistering first-half minutes.
But for the intervention of VAR awarding a penalty for a Fabio Silva dive, Rangers would have lost that game as well.
The final two derby games of the season are the only ones where Celtic have had a full-strength squad to choose from and Brendan Rodgers cruised to a win in each of those in the 2-1 league win at Celtic Park and the 1-0 Hampden win yesterday.
Yes, we can say that winning those games by just one goal doesn’t scream that Celtic were comfortable but these derbies are more often than not closer than they should be.
Now, that’s five games where Rangers had to win to beat Celtic to silverware. They won none of them. Not one.
And if Dessers is looking forward to next season, so are the Celtic fans. Because Brendan Rodgers now has access to millions of pounds courtesy of the league title win and automatic entry into the Champions League group stages.
The Celtic boss will look to spend that to strengthen the side. If Rangers can’t beat Celtic when they are at their weakest point this season, what chance will they have once Rodgers gets the players he wants at the club to start his defence of the title in the summer?