Rangers cup win shouldn't lull Van Bronckhorst into false sense of security as the tricky bit starts NOW - Keith Jackson

And now for the tricky bit.

If Giovanni Van Bronckhorst thought he had his work cut out when he took on the challenge of replacing Steven Gerrard in the Ibrox hotseat, then the Dutchman ain’t seen nothing yet.

In many regards, his first six months in the job have been based around keeping Gerrard’s team ticking over. That he has done so while taking them to a Europa League final and ending the campaign on Saturday by lifting the Scottish Cup, constitutes a more than decent return from the Dutchman’s early days.

And yet it all has to be offset against the loss of a league title and a feeble capitulation which, in any other season, would have left a major blotch on the manager’s copy book.

Put it this way, 2003 still belongs to Celtic even though it was a year which saw Rangers clinch a domestic treble.

By making it to Seville, Martin O’Neill and his players achieved something truly out of the ordinary and so, using the same logic - and by getting to the same city - Van Bronckhorst and his players will be forgiven for allowing their domestic crown to slip.

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It would have been tantamount to an act of inhumanity if they had ended the season with nothing more than painful regrets to look back on and even