Celtic keep battling, Rangers keep winning in Scottish football's phoney war

Celtic's crisis only ever existed in the heads of their more entitled fans and former players, and their Old Testament response to a few ropey performances amid a nine-year run of near total dominance.

Now that Neil Lennon has brought the club to another final and to the brink of a quadruple treble, the panic merchants among Celtic's support, the minority who traded in gossip and conspiracy theories and who called for Lennon's removal in order to save the sacred 10, should sit back down.

Celtic have had some issues this past while, for sure. Those issues weren't wholly resolved in their deserved victory over Aberdeen in the semi-final at Hampden on Sunday, but they are eminently resolvable. They always were.

• 'They're achieving greatness. That's overlooked' - Lennon

There's been so much talk about systems and formations, about three at the back and four at the back, about vulnerability in the middle and space down the flanks and lack of punch in midfield. Celtic's problems were partly to do with the defensive set-up of the team, but only partly.

In recent times they've won big games and lost big games with the same formation. Three or four at the back. There is no absolute with these things.

It's arguable that the best Celtic result of last season, and of several seasons before that, was the 2-1 Europa League victory over Lazio in Rome in October, a win worth recalling in order to make a wider point about what's been going on at the club this past while.

Celtic started with three central defenders. They had Fraser Forster making big saves that night. They had James Forrest banging in the first goal and an in-form Odsonne Edouard creating the second. They had Christopher Jullien kicking one off his own line at a critical moment and they had the good fortune of seeing another come slapping back off a post.

If you're going to do the double against a team that would, within months, do their own double over Cristiano Ronaldo's Juventus then you're going to need a slice of luck along the way.

'Celtic have regained some self-belief'

Celtic have lacked personnel and good fortune this season. They don't have Forster and that's a void that might cause them some angst as the months go by. Not spending the money on Forster and then letting Craig Gordon go and spending £4.5m on Vasilis Barkas looks like a piece of decision-making that they might reverse if only they could. Early days, though. Barkas may come good yet.

Lennon's been without Jullien for a spell. He's been missing Forrest's pace and wit and goals out wide. He's longed for Edouard to return to his classy and intimidating best. He's not had Ryan Christie's very best stuff. And luck? His team was depowered in Old Firm week because of Covid-19, the time when the trousers of the malcontents really started to catch fire.

That's not the whole story of their unconvincing performances, but it's an element. Confidence has been low for a while, but for 45 minutes against Lille on Thursday and for much of it against Aberdeen on Sunday we could see a champion side beginning to clamber out of the rut they've been in.

The goal Christie scored was the type of pearler that he delivered regularly last season. The little creative influences of Tom Rogic were redolent of the Aussie in his pomp from seasons past. Edouard returned, not to his old level, but a game under the belt is a step in the right direction.

In winning 2-0 - the clean sheet being a hugely important factor - Celtic regained some of their self-belief. They may say publicly that they never lost it - all teams say the same - but the evidence had mounted up. It was never a crisis. Never. But in light of Rangers' consistency they needed to show signs of improvement and those signs were pretty clear at Hampden.

Lennon has probably not heard the last of the invective. The spontaneous combustion will continue. There's a fine line between justified concern and rank hysteria but not everyone in the Celtic support knows where that line is, particularly not when history beckons with the possibility of a 10th consecutive league title. Lennon is more aware than anybody that this stuff comes with the territory.

Rangers' title tilt built on solid foundations

Rangers were not good enough to be at Hampden, but in their parallel universe they moved nine points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership with their hard-fought win at Kilmarnock. Celtic have two games in hand, but it'll be an age before they get to play them.

Steven Gerrard's team ground it out. It was an 11th clean sheet and an 11th victory in 13 league games. It was further proof that even without goals from their two principal scorers from last season, Alfredo Morelos and Jermain Defoe, they are still getting the job done, mainly through the excellence of their defence. Rangers have become fiendishly hard not just to beat but to even score against.

By this time last year Morelos had already scored nine league goals while Defoe was on 10. This time, they've managed three and one. Had you told Gerrard at the start of the season that his two main strikers would only have four league goals between them come the first day of November he might have felt the urge to reach for a paper bag to hyperventilate into.

And yet the improvements in defence and midfield have made them a more convincing crew than a year ago. Celtic fans would have been fairly confident that an Ibrox implosion was coming at some point last season but they'll be less likely to believe it'll happen again.

In reality, this is the phoney war section of the season. It's only at the turn of the year and into the spring when we'll know if Rangers have it within themselves to go the distance. It's something we keep saying, but that's only because it's true. We can't peer into the psychology of these Ibrox players and figure out whether they're going to be strong enough when the heat really comes on. We'll only know it when we get there.

Certainly, their foundations look solid and their confidence is up. They have an edge, a togetherness, a depth of squad and, as yet, no great discernible weakness in Premiership terms beyond the rotten unprofessionalism of Jordan Jones and George Edmundson.

Already struggling for game-time, the pair are now self-isolating for a fortnight after breaking government rules on social gatherings. Smart work, lads. The Rangers management are infuriated but as a club they can easily weather the loss of two fringe players. The pair of them might find it a long road back to first-team football.

Ranges have built a fortress around their own goalposts. If Covid-19 allows, the title race could go to the wire right enough. If you were have to your last fiver on an outcome you'd have to weigh it up before you plunged. Previously, you'd have lumped on green in a heartbeat.

It's why Lennon will be a relieved man to see his team find something of their old selves at Hampden. You'd tell him to block out the noise for the next six months but, truthfully, there is nothing any of us can tell him about life in Scottish football that he hasn't already known for many years. Lennon keeps battling, Gerrard keeps winning. Onwards they go.