RANGERS' twin triumphs in the domestic cup competitions last season may have been worthy enough in themselves, but their failure in the league championship has left them with the frustration of those Olympic silver medallists who expected gold. For the opportunity to start making amends, however, the Ibrox side have had to wait a mere four months, rather than four years.
As the first Old Firm collision of the season looms at Celtic Park tomorrow, Smith made it clear that neither he nor the players involved who remain at the club has forgotten the deep disappointment of the faltering in the closing stages that saw the
m forgo the chance to lift the title for the first time in three years.
Two of the reversals they suffered before the final, damning defeat at Aberdeen on the last day, of course, occurred at tomorrow's venue. And, as Smith emphasised yesterday, neither Celtic nor Rangers is, generally speaking, accustomed to set-backs on their own turf, making his team's assignment perhaps the more daunting.
Our first objective last season," said Smith, "was to make ourselves strong enough to present more of a challenge than we had in the two previous years. I think it's fair to say we managed that, but it is disappointing to find that we are still in the position of challengers.
It's also unusual to be playing an Old Firm match away from home for the third time in a row, but that's just been caused by unusual circumstances. But Celtic and Rangers generally don't lose many on their own ground, so if you can take something from one of these visits, it's obviously a real plus."
Rangers' prospects of at least avoiding defeat have clearly risen in the weeks since their ignominious elimination from Europe by FBK Kaunas. The recruitment of Pedro Mendes from Portsmouth and Steven Davis from Fulham has brought a certain flair and inventiveness to a midfield that had previously appeared pedestrian and unimaginative.
Smith himself is encouraged by the progress evident in the last two matches, at home to Hearts and away to Aberdeen, following an unconvincing opener at Falkirk. "The experience against Kaunas brought as difficult an aftermath as I've ever had to handle," Smith confessed. "It was hard to know how to approach it and how to go about simply coping with it. We knew we were going to have to fit in new players, too, so it has been a testing period.
It may sound strange, but first-year changes are easier to accommodate than those in the second year and we're still trying to settle some of them in. I think it's fair to say, from that point of view, that the attack is the area that would present the most complicated dilemma.
We have a number of options, but the problem is that strikers can take time to form a partnership and you have to be fair to them, to give them a bit of time. At clubs like ours, of course, you also have to keep winning while they're finding themselves. But that's up to me to get that right, to make the correct choices."
Nowhere is the scrutiny more concentrated than in tomorrow's fixture, an event with which Smith has been involved – excepting his years with Everton and Scotland – since he became Graeme Souness's assistant in 1986. He is convinced that, during those two decades, the intensity of the rivalry between the two sets of supporters has, if anything, deepened.
It's a game that has always had an edge that it was never going to lose," he said. "But I think it has become more intense over the past few years because of the extent of the media coverage. The onset of widespread television and radio coverage and the participation of fans through hotlines, phone-ins and websites means that it is covered in minute detail by every area of the media.
That can bring undue pressure of the kind we saw last year, when Gordon (Strachan, the Celtic manager) came under dreadful pressure because his team had lost the first Old Firm match. A result like that is taken in isolation, rather than in the context of an entire league campaign, and somebody is put under terrible pressure.
There's also the fact that we play each other four times and that such a gap has opened between the Old Firm clubs and the others over the past few years. That seems to have made the games between us more significant. I mean, when Celtic and Rangers played each other only twice, it was possible to lose both and still win the league. I think if you lost all four now, you'd have very little chance of doing that.
I don't think the games themselves are played any differently, the football remains more or less the same. It's the media attention that surrounds the fixture that has changed and I think it has made the event more pressured. Still, it's always one to look forward to, even if you are certainly going to suffer your share of defeats over a period of time."
Smith's only short-term injury victim is Lee McCulloch, whose strained knee ligaments make him unavailable. He will also decide today whether to give a place on the bench to Maurice Edu, the 22-year-old American midfielder who arrived at Murray Park from Toronto just yesterday lunchtime.
I wouldn't worry about tiredness in Edu," said the manager. "What the hell, he's 22, he won't be tired at that age. But it would be asking a lot to put him straight into the team for a match like this.
We'll see how he shapes at training tomorrow and decide if he should be on the bench."
The full article contains 978 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
