Rangers boss Michael Beale has explained why there are no preparations for his team to give a guard of honour for Glasgow rivals Celtic this weekend. It happens all the time in other divisions, including the Scottish Premiership, with Hearts providing a guard of honour to Celtic in both 2018 and 2019, as did Kilmarnock in 2017.
The two Scottish sides will meet again tomorrow in the season’s sixth and final derby, which will be held at the 50,817-capacity Ibrox Stadium. However, The Hoops have already confirmed that they will retain their Scottish Premiership championship, defeating Rangers to the top place once more.
Beale explains giving Celtic guard of honor ‘won’t be a right thing to do’
Celtic have won the league crown nine times in the last ten seasons, whereas Rangers have only won it once. And it has been confirmed that there will be no guard of honour for tomorrow’s Old Firm game. Rangers did not give Celtic a guard of honor back in 2019 when Neil Lennon’s team visited Ibrox in a post-split encounter after clinching the league with a 3-0 away win over Aberdeen a month earlier.
Then, in 2021, interim Celtic manager John Kennedy invoked the example of 2019 to explain why they would not be providing Rangers with a guard of honour when they met the Ibrox side a week after blowing their ten-in-a-row chances. And there will be no guard of honour at Ibrox on Saturday, when only Rangers fans will be there. Beale told Sky Sports:
“No it doesn’t become tricky here because in the past it’s been turned down and hasn’t been done. So I don’t think they would want us to. And in a stadium with our fans, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do either. We have a lot of respect for them in terms of them winning the league. They’ve clearly been the best team, the league table doesn’t lie. But that’s been dealt with in the past so that’s probably been taken out of my hands, thankfully.”
Following Beale’s remarks, Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou stated that his rivals’ lack of a customary guard of honour is not a show of disrespect. Ange told Sky Sports in his pre-match presser duties:
“It’s no big deal for me. Those kind of things seem to be a bit symbolic rather than anything real. Respect is shown in different ways and we don’t need a guard of honour to know that. There’s respect between the two sides and certainly between the two sets of players.
“It might be grudging but they know how hard it is to be successful. Rangers won it two years ago and we have won it the last two years so that respect is there and we don’t need a guard of honour for that.”
Celtic will be able to go a full season undefeated against the Rangers if they win or draw at Ibrox. To say the least, that would be a major accomplishment for Ange’s men. So far this season, they have won four and drawn one of the five Glasgow derbies. As a result, this game will have a lot riding on it for both sides, but especially for the Rangers, who will be playing their final game of the season. Beale’s team will very certainly conclude the season without a trophy.