Rangers won’t regret missing out on £5m deal as former target suffers 7-1 humiliation.
Rangers understand how it feels to be on the losing end of a European humiliation.
The 2022 Champions League group-stage campaign for Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s Rangers club was disastrous, with the team losing all six matches and surrendering 22 goals.
Rangers lost 3-0 to Napoli, 4-0 to Ajax, and 7-1 at home to Liverpool, and Van Bronckhorst was fired barely three weeks after Jurgen Klopp’s team wreaked havoc on the blue side of Glasgow.
Brendan Rodgers will not suffer the same fate as the current Besiktas manager. But Celtic’s own seven-goal thrashing at the hands of a furious Borussia Dortmund in midweek will have made for entertaining viewing from a Rangers standpoint.
Especially since one of the Gers’ former transfer targets found himself in the midst of a yellow-and-black frenzy.
Former Rangers target Auston Trusty embarrassed in Celtic defeat
Celtic would have known that their mission had grown even more difficult when Cameron Carter-Vickers, Rodgers’ standout center-back, was ruled out for the trip to Signal Iduna Park.
But even the most pessimistic Celtic fan could not have predicted the disgrace that would ensue without Carter-Vickers to keep the Celtic defence in check.
Austin Trusty, his substitute, had waited his entire life for a Champions League debut. To say his dream turned into a nightmare, or that Trusty didn’t live up to his surname, would be an understatement.
Of course, the former Arsenal kid was not entirely to blame. Much of the blame has rested on Rodgers’ shoulders. A man who has suffered his fair share of European defeats during two spells at Celtic left his team open to Dortmund’s quick transitions with a foolish gameplan.
Rangers have consistently outscored their Old Firm rivals in continental competition in recent years. Philippe Clement, Steven Gerrard, and [originally] Van Bronckhorst adopted a more pragmatic strategy to help defend their backline against top-tier opposition.
And Trusty, if he wants to avoid being exposed again, may be secretly hoping that Rodgers follows Rangers’ lead when Celtic face RB Leipzig, Atalanta, and others.
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