Celtic and Rangers go under the microscope - what pre-season has told us about impending title battle

A comparative analysis of Celtic and Rangers in the here and now requires to come with more caveats than you would find at a caveats’ convention (there surely must be one somewhere in the multiverse).

Yet, with the kick-off to a cinch Premiership season sure to see Scotland’s two behemoths engaged in a battle royale for domestic supremacy only a week-and-a-bit away, the exercise is irresistible. Not least because it is one of our game’s favourite supporter/pundit parlour games. All this understood, and without further ado, let us delve into how the pair appear to be shaping up for a championship that should be thrillingly nip and tuck.

The latest (scant) evidence we have for the nick in which Ange Postecoglou’s title holders and Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s challengers find themselves is provided by their outings over recent days. Now, as opposition, the English Premier League’s seventh-placed finishers West Ham are several stratospheres above a Legia Warsaw that struggled to a lowly 10th in the Polish top flight. The fact, then, that Rangers registered an impressive 3-1 win over David Moyes’ men in their backyard on Tuesday before Celtic squandered a 2-0 half-time advantage to draw in Warsaw the following day tells which of the duo had the best of it in their latest warm-up encounters. It is crucial to dig deeper than the superficial, though, in assessing the clubs’ relative strength.

As fascinating as any aspect of their respective displays was that they re-affirmed what very different sides have been crafted by Postecoglou and van Bronckhorst. Celtic remain a free spirit. Their first-half swarming over their hosts with the superb Reo Hatate, Matt O’Riley and Callum McGregor engaging intoxicatingly high up the pitch to