Richard Gough admits Celtic have better players than Rangers and fears another Parkhead pummelling

Rangers legend Richard Gough fears his old club is set to suffer another excruciating derby day beating at the home of their bitter rivals this weekend.

And the man who led the Ibrox club to nine successive league titles has conceded they will face up to a Celtic side jampacked with better players. Gough insists the vast majority of supporters have become conditioned into expecting the worst after a woeful run of results at Parkhead stretching back to the turn of the century.

His old side has managed just six wins in 40 trips to Glasgow’s East End but new boss Michael Beale will have to defy the odds on Saturday to have any chance of halting Celtic’s match towards an 11th league title in 12 years. The former Rangers skipper, speaking exclusively to Record Sport from his home in California, said: “Look at what’s happened the last few times we’ve played there. There has been a 3-0 and a 4-0 in there. It’s got heavy!

“I still get up and watch it at something like half past four in the morning here but I’m sitting behind the couch! It’s a hard watch for me, especially when my record at Parkhead was a good one.

“I didn’t suffer too many defeats there during my 11 years, never mind these past one or two seasons. And it’s the defeats that hurt, I remember them more than I do all the wins.”

And Gough believes Rangers are now suffering from the same inferiority complex which had such a crippling affect on Celtic during his own playing days at Ibrox. He went on: “Very much so.

"One of my good friends in the international team was Paul McStay and he was the best Celtic player that I played against during my time. But he didn’t have the team around him that I had.

“When we were together with Scotland we kind of knew it.