Former Rangers legend Ally McCoist is no lover of the Celtic support or the club, yet from his blue tinted perspective, which has no skin in the board v fan Parkhead game, he feels that a lack of ambition has held the hoops back.
Speaking to Simon Ferry and Siobhan Ahearne on a TalkSport chat show, McCoist responded to Ferry’s question of “Who’s to blame for this?” (Celtic’s poor season to date) by saying: “Do you know what I think? I’ve said this to you before Siobhan. I actually think Rangers ave dragged Celtic down a bit.”
With a wry smile etched across his face, McCoist explained: “Because we’ve been that bad, and I think Celtic have been lazy and inept, because they’ve looked at us and gone ah we’ll beat them anyway and instead of looking there (pointing up) they’ve looked at us (pointing down) and went we just need to go there (he then repeated this line in typical McCoist fashion).
“I might be wrong, but it’s just what I think Simon.”
Agreeing with Ally another season low pic.twitter.com/Rp0kEJMHx0
— Mark 🍀 (@minimark3324) December 19, 2025
What’s worrying about this for Celtic fans, more than agreeing with Ally McCoist, is that it observes exactly what many have been pointing to. The domestic domination took hold after Rangers went bust in 2012. For some years, Aberdeen were the closest title rivals for the Bhoys, then theRangers took second spot for the rest of the seasons apart from during Covid. In all that time, Celtic failed to qualify for the Champions League on multiple occasions and have still yet to win a knockout stage tie in Europe since 2004.
It is the view of many Scottish Football observers that the club simply aims to be just ahead of their city rivals in the title race, rather than being more ambitious in Europe, which would then almost guarantee the continuation of domestic dominance and entertainment anyway.
McCoist’s a fud, but for once, the fat gardener might be right.