Rangers: Steven Gerrard leads club to triumph 'sweeter than anyone could fathom'
- Published
'From 10 years of misery to this... bouncing' - Rangers fans celebrate at Ibrox
Even in their darkest times, the real believers among the Rangers fans would have known this day would come. But not many would have dared to believe it would be in such emphatic style.
Steven Gerrard's team didn't just win the title, they cruised it. For them, victory has been a roaring certainty for many months now but it was confirmed when Celtic did what Celtic have been doing and stumbled at Tannadice.
32 games played, 28 victories and four draws, 77 goals for and only nine against. Some people will argue against the significance of it, but there's no point. There's no debate here.
The narrative from the east end of Glasgow will centre around their own haplessness, that their own errors in recruitment, the sudden pedestrian nature of their team, and the board's reluctance to act in replacing Neil Lennon earlier was what settled this.
They'll cling to that argument like a drowning man clings to a life raft, but it's only a small part of the picture. Even on their very best days in their nine-in-a-row years, Celtic would have found it tough to beat this Rangers side. Not that we'll ever know, but it would have been a hell of a battle.
Celtic imploded, for sure, but Rangers' numbers are off the charts. Even with six games to go, they have more points than Celtic had at the conclusion of four of their eight titles, excluding last season's truncated campaign. They need four more victories to hit a century of points, a mark that would put them ahead of all Celtic teams bar one in the nine-in-a-row era.
But even that 106-pointer, achieved by Brendan Rodgers' Invincibles in 2016-17, is attainable. Should Rangers continue their run and win their remaining six, they'll join Rodgers' team on 106 points, a level of consistency that few of us thought would be matched, certainly not this quickly and absolutely not by a side that has come nowhere near this sustained standard before.
Close your eyes and it's still easy to recall their days in the lower divisions, their toil in the bottom tier, the losses to Stirling Albion, Annan Athletic and Peterhead, the dour draws against Berwick, Elgin and Montrose.
In the mind's eye, their defeat by Raith Rovers in the Ramsden Cup final is still vivid. The 6-1 aggregate loss to Motherwell in the Premiership play-offs, Bilel Mohsni going loopy in the aftermath. The 4-0s and the 5-1s against Celtic. The loss to Progres Niederkorn. Pedro Caixinha standing in a bush.
There are hundreds of images from the dog days. All that money spent and wasted, all that torment, all the chairmen and chief executives, all the managers, all the characters that passed through their doors. It's over, all of it.
When Gerrard took control as manager he didn't just have a team to rebuild, he had an entire club to fix. Recruitment and scouting and attitude - he had to strip it down and start again.
For a rookie boss in the white heat of Glasgow football up against the red hot Rodgers it was an Everestian challenge, but Gerrard put the building blocks in place, slowly - too slowly for many - but surely.
He got backed by his board, bought wisely and grew. Gerrard has turned a 39-point deficit on Celtic in the season before he arrived into a 20-point advantage. A difference of 59 points. This is nirvana stuff to every Rangers fan.
Steven Gerrard revelled in his side's success at Rangers' training ground at Auchenhowie
And it's not just domestic. Had Rangers won this title while treading water in Europe there'd be a proviso to the praise, but it's not just Scottish domination that they have here, it's something more.
Already this season they've taken care of Willem II, Galatasaray, Standard Liege, Lech Poznan and Royal Antwerp while drawing home and away against Benfica, two games they should have won.
They have Slavia Prague next in the Europa League and have a fighting chance of going beyond the last 16. Gerrard has his players performing on both fronts. The job he has done in term in terms of developing their mental strength has been deeply impressive.
We can't know if any of this would have been different had they been playing to full stadiums this past season. We can only speculate on how much the stress on them would have ratcheted upwards if there was 50,000 watching them every other weekend.
The hunch is that empty stadiums reduced the heat and facilitated the winning run but, watching them all season, there's also a feeling that crowds or no crowds they'd have won it easily in any event. Rangers found something this season - defensive stability, midfield creativity, goals.
When Alfredo Morelos wasn't weighing in, James Tavernier weighed-in. When Tavernier wasn't scoring, Kemar Roofe scored. When it wasn't Roofe, it was Ryan Kent. When it wasn't Kent it was somebody else.
They've dovetailed nicely. What has been screamingly obvious is the strength of their spirit. From early on this season there's just been something irresistible about them.
The pressure valve has now been released. Close to a decade of frustration and fury. Close to a decade of humiliation on the field and confusion off it. Close to a decade of Rangers being the plaything of the Craig Whytes and the Charles Greens and the Easdales and everybody else who has had a crack at running the club.
You would say that for Rangers fans it'll have been worth the wait, but nothing was worth the madness. It'll be sweet, though. Sweeter than any of us outside of the club could possibly fathom, no matter how hard we try.