At Ibrox on Saturday, against a backdrop of local glee, Rangers overtook Celtic at terrific speed while the champions were on their lap of honour.
A bit late in the day to be meaningful in the league, but when you’ve been under the thumb of your closest rivals for as long as Rangers have, you have to celebrate days like these, no matter the bittersweet nature of it.
If this was the first Old Firm game of the season there’d be hope for Rangers on the road ahead, but it’s the last and it has regret in its slipstream.
They were excellent and delivered a performance that went down a storm with their own people. The caveats of Celtic having already won the title and having gone into this one missing three-quarters of their regular back four won’t worry them. Rangers needed this, any way they could get it.
Michael Beale will be a relieved man. For him, the stakes were high.
If he’d lost another game to Celtic it would have been four in a row and at that point many among his own support might have been minded to ask how many is too many? He’s spared a brutal inquisition.
He kicks on into the summer having shown that he can beat Ange Postecoglou’s team. Maybe there’s asterisk beside the victory, but it’s a victory nonetheless.
He will rebuild, and he needs to rebuild heavily regardless of what happened at Ibrox, but there might be calm now where there could have been chaos.
From the first whistle, Rangers had an edge and Celtic did not. They had aggression and energy and a crowd roaring them on. Celtic had no Cameron Carter-Vickers, no Greg Taylor, no Alistair Johnson and no stability at the back as a consequence.
This fixture has been pockmarked by Rangers’ weaknesses in defence and Rangers’ wastefulness up front. The tables turned entirely.
It was Beale’s team who were solid at one end and ruthless at the other. It was Postecoglou’s men who were vulnerable in front of Joe Hart and profligate when attacking Robby McCrorie. Kyogo Furuhashi didn’t start this time. He was missed.
‘Cantwell was the best player on the pitch’
Todd Cantwell sent Rangers on their way, thrashing in a shot from close range when Hart parried an effort from John Lundstram. In previous Old Firms, Rangers men in that kind of position might have ballooned it over the bar. Cantwell drove it straight and true, as emphatic as you please.
Cantwell was excellent. Creatively, defensively, work-rate, all-round influence – he was the best player on the park. He scored one and might have scored another.
At one point he gesticulated to the crowd to up their noise, which they duly did. It was all a bit much for Postecoglou’s side.
In Norwich, Cantwell was once the coming kid. Reared within walking distance of Carrow Road. One of their own. As a boy coming through the ranks he felt he was always written off. Talented, but not strong enough. A nice player, but not enough dog in him, not enough resilience.
The critics were wrong, in the beginning at any rate.
Cantwell broke into the Norwich team with a vengeance from the summer of 2019. He scored in the Premier League against Chelsea in a 3-2 loss. He scored in the Premier League against Manchester City in a 3-2 win. He scored in the Premier League against Everton and Norwich won again, 2-0. He was 21 years old. He’s still only 25.
He scored against Arsenal in the December, against Wolves in the January. He got another against Manchester United in the FA Cup.
He was dazzling. People whispered about a £30m move to Aston Villa. The notion back then that Rangers would be able to afford him one day would have been laughed out of town.
What happened? Norwich fans are still trying to figure it out, but the fact is that when a player they were giddy about, a talent who was a jewel of their academy, left the club to join Rangers the overwhelming reaction was that of relief.
He was mercurial. His spark faded. He got distracted. Maybe there was a touch of truculence there, a shade of arrogance that was unhealthy.
On one occasion he stormed off down the tunnel when substituted early. He posted cryptic messages on social media about things that were upsetting him at the club. There was talk of conflict with one manager and then another. Sometimes it spilled out into the public. It wasn’t pretty.
All the time, there was hope among Norwich fans that he would get it together and fulfil his promise, but it was forlorn hope. Social media went after him. It was a mess.
He went to Bournemouth on loan and then back to Norwich. Before he fetched up at Rangers he hadn’t scored in 54 games. He’s now got four in his past eight, a winner against Aberdeen last week topped by his opener against Celtic.
If Cantwell can find this kind of consistency during the hard months of next season when the league is alive rather than dead in the water then he has to have a role to play.
If he’s got his mojo back then that’s good news for Beale as he embarks on revamping his squad in the summer. This victory means he can do it in peace, or whatever passes for peace in the city when your rival is winning everything.
It was a moment of respite. A chance to breathe. Celtic won’t care. Rangers will care very much.
