Sunday Times, The (London, England)
January 3, 1988
Author: BOB FERRIER


Celtic .......... 2 Rangers ......... 0

CELTIC'S well-merited win, before a huge, chanting crowd of 60,800, puts them squarely in command of the Scottish Championship, with a seven-point lead over Rangers, although the reigning champions have a game in hand.
The traditional New Year's match between these arch rivals never reached high levels of skill. It seldom does, in fact, caught up as it is with torrents of passion and, indeed, hate spilling from packed terraces, which had Billy McNeill, the Celtic manager, writing rather lyrically in the programme that the 'social circumstances which have trapped both clubs in Glasgow's destiny comes to the boil' on such occasions.

This time the players and the crowd spurned the insanities of the past and the match was won by goals quite brilliantly taken by McAvennie.

Celtic made a sparkling opening to the match, which began their centenary year, threatening to over-run Rangers, who seemed the more afflicted by nerves. Their early control and passing was below standard even from experienced players like Souness and Wilkins, but with half an hour gone, Rangers were tightening, quickening and getting back into the match.

But a few minutes before half-time, Celtic scored a lethal goal. McStay hit a stunning cross-pass through the defence to the right wing. Morris's run and first-time low cross were perfection. McAvennie volleyed a quite shimmering goal.

Much of the onfield play held a strange neutrality, and Rangers had a strange shape to them, McCoist, their leading scorer, being left to battle alone against the Celtic defence. McAvennie's second, the clinching goal, was headed brilliantly past Roberts, who replaced Woods in the Rangers goal some eight minutes from the end following Woods's collision with the Celtic defender Baillie. Woods went to hospital with suspeected broken ribs, which could keep him out of the side for six weeks.

The match result will give Rangers much to ponder. If they were the team of 1987, they ar not the team of this moment, in spite a spate of extraordinary purchases. The latest of these, Walters from Aston Villa, made little impression on the match. Neither, strangely, did Souness, in what may well be his final playing season.

He clearly has a vision of Rangers as a dominant club not only in Scotland but in Europe. In buying players, he has become as acquisitive as a Robert Maxwell, and as manager has taken an autocratic grip of a club that had known no championship success in almost a decade until his arrival.

Souness has a hard task in maintaining Rangers at such a level. Yet he has history to help; a Pounds 10m stadium almost fully paid off; a pools organisation which gives the club more than Pounds 1m a year; and a vast following.

If you can't buy success, you can buy good players, the basis of success. That seems to be the Souness creed. With a score of matches still to be played, all is far from lost - and Aberdeen and Hearts still have plenty to say. One major problem for Souness will be digesting all these players he has bought and getting them into some kind of consistent playing pattern.

Weather: overcast. Ground: perfect.

Goals: McAvennie (44min) 1-0; (82min) 2-0.

Celtic (4-3-3); McKnight; Morris, Baillie, Whyte, Rogan; Aitken, McStay, Stark; Miller, McAvennie, Walker.

Rangers (4-4-2): Woods (sub: McGregor 82min); Nisbet, Roberts, Gough, Munro; Cooper (sub: Francis 28min), Wilkins, Souness, Walters; McCoist, Durant.

Referee: A Ferguson (Giffnock).