Giovanni van Bronckhorst has unwittingly agreed with Aberdeen manager Jim Goodwin after the Dons boss said some weeks ago ‘now you see how we feel’.

Gio was speaking at his presser when asked about the UCL campaign, and he expressed how his team has a ‘much bigger budget than Aberdeen and that’s pointed out when we win 4-1’. But then we face Liverpool and lose by the same kind of margin ourselves in a mirror of their superiority over Rangers compared with ours over Aberdeen.

Which is exactly what Goodwin pointed out all those weeks ago after Ajax when he highlighted Rangers were suffering in the same way in UCL that Aberdeen have for years at the hands of Ibrox’s finest.

Of course, Goodwin himself is a Celtic fan, so wouldn’t dare say the same thing to Stavros’ lot in Parkhead, but the point is clear – both Rangers and Celtic are too strong by a distance for the SPL, and week-in-week-out smother their opponents, generally speaking, occasional aberration aside.

Then go into a competition as strong as the UCL and get absolutely leathered in kind, which is pretty much the point Gio himself made today in that ironic nod to the Aberdeen manager.

It helps no one, that Rangers and Celtic have no quality opposition domestically, so cannot hope to compete at UCL level. Indeed, this was cited as a big problem back in the day, 20 years ago, that we’d both run riot on domestic level but how would that help us face the might of Europe?

And now, present day, the same problem has returned – Celtic of course have been in the UCL on their own a few times in Rangers’ temporary absence, but have found the going impossible, without Rangers at least to bounce off domestically.

So this is a very valid point – while Gio makes the same point, and Goodwin mocked the notion slightly, it is entirely true.

Rangers can challenge at UEL level because it’s somewhere between the bottom of the PL and upper midtable, but when it comes to the very best, the elite of the UCL, the quality the SPL gives is utterly insufficient.

Ajax too suffer from this, and it’s why the UCL’s best teams always hail from the big five leagues that give their best teams such strong opponents. The last time one didn’t was of course 2004 and Jose’s Porto. Last time before that, another full decade prior, Ajax themselves v Milan.

So Goodwin has a point, we do see how he feels. Kind of…