Not one Celtic player would get into the current Ibrox squad?? Seriously? Is this where we’re at already??

This morning, Alan Hutton has decided that not one Celtic player would get into the current Ibrox side.

NOT ONE.

I had to read it twice.

He was speaking to Record Sport via Footballpredictions.com, and Mark Pirie duly wrote it up at the Record.

Here is what the former Ibrox right-back had to say:

To be totally honest and only going on form at this moment in time, I would say no Celtic players get into the Rangers XI.

If you’d asked me this question a month ago, it would have been a lot different, because Celtic started the season well, Rangers didn’t.

So that’s us then, is it?

Three bad results on the spin, and suddenly not a single player at our football club is fit to lace Staunch Del’s boots.

Hilarious.

Hutton admits in his very next breath that a month ago he would have given you the complete opposite answer

Read that second line back again.

A month ago it would have been “a lot different”.

That is the entire argument collapsing in the man’s own mouth.

Because what he is actually telling you is that this is a form table, not a squad assessment.

And a form table at the end of September is worth absolutely nothing.

We were top of the league a month ago.

We are top of the league now.

Funny how that particular detail keeps getting left out of these pieces, isn’t it?

As far as the Record is concerned the title is already sitting in the Ibrox trophy room

Celtic lead the Scottish Premiership.

I’ll say it again, because you’ll not read it anywhere else this week.

Celtic lead the Scottish Premiership.

And yet here we are, being told our entire first team wouldn’t make a squad that is sitting behind us in the table.

This is what they do, and they have been doing it for as long as I’ve been watching this club.

The SMSM get the faintest sniff of blood off us and they absolutely wet themselves.

Barry Ferguson was at the very same game a fortnight ago, telling us that our players would hate every second of their afternoon at Ibrox.

We were finished last season too, remember?

We all saw how that one turned out.

The same man then went on to tell us that there will be a worry at Celtic, and that we are probably a little bit fearful going into the break.

Over whatever amount of years, Celtic have been miles in front.

So they haven’t really had to worry so much about Rangers, but this is probably a moment in time where going into the international break, they’re probably a little bit fearful.

Fearful of what, exactly?

Of a side that we are currently looking down on in the league table?

Of a manager who has never won a single thing in his entire career, barring a League Cup on penalties against Caley Thistle, and who needed fourteen new players just to get himself into second place?

I’ll grant him the worry, because the worry is real and every one of us feels it.

But fearful is a word you use when you want a headline to travel, and Hutton knows fine well that it travels.

How exactly does Alan Hutton know that Camilo Duran or Kasper Hogh wouldn’t fit into a Derek McInnes system?

He doesn’t.

He can’t.

Neither of those boys has ever been asked to play a minute in one.

I wrote about this a fortnight ago, and about how Qarabag took Duran out of that right wing role because it didn’t suit him.

Duran is a Champions League striker who is being shoehorned onto the right wing by a manager who won’t listen to him.

Hogh is £11m of centre forward going seven games without a goal in a team that creates nothing for him.

Put either of them into a side that is actually set up properly, and then come back and ask me the question.

That is not me making excuses for them – it’s me pointing out that Hutton is judging our players on a system rather than on ability.

I’m not going to pretend that we are fine, because we are nowhere near fine

We are in a precarious position right now, and only a fool would argue otherwise.

Three straight defeats going into the break tells you everything.

The Premier Sports Cup, then Ferencvaros, then the league.

And no, I don’t believe for a second that Martin O’Neill is the man to get us out of it.

But writing off every single player at this football club?

That is going a bit too far.

To be fair to Hutton, he isn’t wrong about the big games.

LASK, Ferencvaros and the derby double were nowhere near the standard required

It’s the leap from “they’ve been poor in four games” to “not one of them is good enough” that is doing all the heavy lifting here.

And that leap isn’t punditry, no matter who is making it.

It’s a headline.

£31.6m went out of the Parkhead coffers in the summer on Camilo Duran, Kasper Hogh, Mika Baur, Haïssem Hassan, Joel van den Berg and Jordan Lotomba.

Plenty of that money was wasted, and I’ve written about it often enough.

Nobody needs to lecture me on the quality of our recruitment.

But those boys haven’t been at our club five minutes.

Meanwhile the fourteen men Ibrox brought in are handed all the patience in the world and a generous seven out of ten from Hutton.

Same summer.

Same upheaval.

Two completely different verdicts.

We get buried after three games, and they get all the time in the world to bed in.

And you know fine well why that is – because one of those stories sells and the other one doesn’t.

Keep it up, lads.

Because nothing fires up this support quite like being told we’re beaten in September…

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