Rangers fans aren’t best pleased with Niko Kranjcar

Rangers’ star playmaker Niko Kranjcar may just find himself in a few fans’ bad books after his recent comments about Old Firm matches.

For those of you who do not know, the Croatian attacking midfielder has asserted that it is ok for Rangers to lose all of the clashes with Celtic, as long as they win the title.

While on paper winning the title is already an absurd proposition, the defeatist notion that Rangers should succumb to their most bitter rivals if it means winning the league as a whole is filled with contradiction and bewildering logic at best, and while Niko is a gentleman who has certainly conducted himself well at Ibrox, these quotes are at odds with the entire ethos that is Rangers.

The Croat said:

“We play against Celtic four times a year, so to win the league you can lose all four and win the other games if they slip up.”

The ex-Spurs creative spark famously pointed out how much Rangers fans had suffered outside the SPL, so it is not like he does not grasp what the importance of Rangers is:

“Obviously I am thankful for the way that they have treated me since I came [here]. But it is also a massive obligation to absolutely give everything for this football club. I think every single player in this dressing room feels the same. The people, the fans of this football club have suffered for a long time unfortunately and they deserve nothing less from us than 100 per cent commitment to achieve the goal that we have set out for ourselves and that is winning the championship.”

So it is quite a strange comment to make, when the 32-year old understands the rivaly with Celtic, to imply that it is ok to lose to them as long as the title is won.

We know he gets it, or ‘got’ it. But the fact the dressing room is now genuinely seeing itself as inferior to Celtic paints a deeply worrying picture about the mindset now permeating within Rangers players.