Rangers shouldn’t laugh at Ange exit but instead start restoring natural order amid Celtic dominance – Barry Ferguson

THIS is no time for anyone at Rangers to take their eye off the ball.

Yes, I absolutely get it. The sight of Ange Postecoglou leaving Celtic for Spurs will have delighted some of my old club’s supporters. But I’m not one of them. When I wrote last week that I didn’t want the big Aussie to quit for Spurs I meant every word of it, because I wanted Michael Beale to stand up to the challenge from across the city and then overcome it.

Put it this way, Celtic’s decades of dominance are not going to be ended by default. And it’s worth remembering that, while Postecoglou claimed five out of six trophies in his two years at Parkhead, this was just the latest part of a pattern which stretches back way longer than a couple of seasons.

In total, that’s 17 trophies they’ve picked up over the last seven campaigns. Just let that sink in for a moment. From the 21 that have been up for grabs over that period, they’ve stuck 17 of them in their own trophy cabinet. And if anyone at Ibrox thinks that’s even close to being considered acceptable then they don’t deserve to be inside the building.

So let’s be very, very clear. This dominance has to stop.

And there’s no point in Rangers celebrating Postecoglou jumping ship into the English Premier League when their own house still needs putting in order. No, Rangers are going to have to earn the right to get back to the top of the Scottish game by their own actions. They won’t just land there by getting lucky. And even if they do, they certainly won’t stay there for very long.

Picking up the odd trophy every now and then is simply not the way my old club was built. I was brought up to accept that delivering anything less than one or two pieces of silverware a season would be looked upon as a