I have weird feeling after Rangers took apart Celtic and one overriding emotion over 11 point gap – Barry Ferguson

The weirdest thing about watching Rangers take Celtic apart the other day is I’m still not too sure how I feel about it.

Of course I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it from my seat in the stand. This is the Rangers I’ve wanted to see for so long – full of energy, desire and aggression, swarming all over the opposition, snapping into tackles and springing attacks on them – time after time. It was relentless. It was rampant. It was what Rangers are supposed to be all about. I lapped it up. But a day or so on I’m still scratching my head and wondering how it’s even possible that the same group of players are still sitting 11 points off the pace.

So the overriding emotion right now is one of frustration. I still can’t believe they managed to leave five points behind against St Mirren and Motherwell at a time in the season when there was so much to play for. I honestly don’t know where those two performances came from because, up until that point, they had been building up a head of steam both domestically and in Europe.

But the manager made some changes to his starting XI on the advice of his medical department and, on the back of those decisions, Rangers offered up two first half performances which were simply nowhere near acceptable. And for which they are now paying such a huge price in terms of where the season goes from here.

We’ve all heard the debate over sports science and whether or not Philippe Clement has been guilty of paying too much attention to the stats and the data. Well if I was him at Easter Road on Sunday I would turn around to the same XI who started on Thursday and tell them to get back out there and go again – no matter what the laptops are saying.

Wrap them up in cotton wool, give them a warm