Rangers’ Old Firm XI was secretly leaked 24 hours before being published in new shock revelations as Ibrox Noise learned on Saturday evening.
The selection for Parkhead was known 24 hours in advance with sources knowing the exact XI being chosen by Rangers manager Philippe Clement, suggesting, disturbingly, there is at least one mole who produced this information for wider consumption, missed by ourselves admittedly.
We have found, through forensic research, that the exact XI was claimed by at least two sites as being Clement’s chosen selection at around half 6 on Saturday evening, meaning Brendan Rodgers knew exactly what team to choose to counter the Belgian manager’s choices.
Of course, it still means you need to do the job on the pitch in itself, but someone absolutely gave Rodgers the heads up by getting that XI out into the public domain even if not everyone picked up on it.
It was out there, player-for-player.
Clement had picked his XI at least 48 hours in advance, and it was leaked by someone inside Ibrox to the wider circulation giving our opponent a complete advantage with preparation.
This isn’t good – it’s one thing to have a manager struggling, which Clement is, and we’ve been immensely hard on him, but if his own staff or players are leaking his team choice out, it makes things 20x harder for him and he has our backing on the idea that he deserves the right to have his team a surprise element 75 minutes before kick off.
Turns out he didn’t have that, and Celtic knew exactly what team they’d face 100%.
Does this make a real difference? Sure, our XI was poor, and Celtic really didn’t struggle against it, but it was made easier for them by knowing what it was.
This is very troubling.
Who let this information out?