Cyriel Dessers can FINALLY have his big Rangers moment against Celtic as Ibrox icon backs star to silence critics

Like Cyriel Dessers, Mark Hateley once felt compelled to take a pop back at his Ibrox critics.

The only difference was that the Rangers legend did it from a position of strength after scoring his famous title-clinching double against Aberdeen. Dessers took on his detractors earlier this month, lashing out with a public show of frustration as Gers crashed out of the Champions League to Dynamo Kyiv.

He’s won some of them back over after making it five goals in his last five games but there are plenty who still require some convincing heading into tomorrow’s opening Old Firm crunch of the new campaign. It’s 34 years since Hateley also found himself the target of the Ibrox boo boys after he was recruited by Graeme Souness to split up Ally McCoist’s partnership with Mo Johnstone. Complaints over that unpopular move were only quelled when the Englishman sank the Dons on the final day of the 1990/91 season. And Hateley reckons Gers’ current whipping boy could do with a defining moment of his own to hit back with against Celtic.

He told Record Sport: “Absolutely he could use a moment like that. My season was a long hard campaign. I was coming off the back of two years without kicking a ball so it was always going to be a challenging first year at Rangers for me.

“I knew that. I thought it would be a dozen games or so, but it turned out to be more like 24. I just wasn’t getting anywhere near the standard I needed to be at until the February. But that’s when you have to roll your sleeves up.

“And as I kept telling everybody who would listen, I was always going to be the one paying every week. It was between Alistair and Mo Johnston who would be playing with me.

“Cheeky Alistair would sit on the bench and crack the jokes - but he