The Ibrox legend is getting giddy as he appreciates thousands of people’s happiness depends on what 11 men do on the park
06:00, 25 Feb 2026Updated 10:13, 25 Feb 2026
Celtic v Rangers – Season in numbers 2025/26
It’s Tuesday morning, just after 11am.
Now, in normal weeks, when the next game is still five days away, it all still feels run of the mill.
As a player, you go into training and go through the usual preparations. There’s plenty of time to be ready for the weekend when it comes around.
But not this week. And not even all these years on, long after the boots have been hung up.
Honestly, I’m sitting here writing this column for Record Sport with a knot tightening in the pit of my stomach. I can feel the adrenaline starting to build inside already.
And this is why the Old Firm derby is not like any other game, in any other league in any other country in the world.
I remember vividly how I’d be feeling back in the day. By Tuesday I was already starting to drift into my own wee bubble.
If I had a moment to myself I’d start to think about the game and, most of all, how much it meant to people. Not just the fans who will be inside that stadium come kick-off time at Sunday lunchtime but the staff who work around the place and at the training ground.
Rangers John Souttar celebrates at Celtic Park
I’d think about Rangers supporters all over the world who would be watching from afar. And I’d think about my mates who have to go about their daily lives, right slap bang in the middle of it. Guys who would have to face the music and be on the receiving end from their colleagues at work on Monday morning, if we didn’t take care of things on the pitch.
That was what was whirling through my mind. There’s only 11 of us lucky enough to run out there wearing those shirts. But there are thousands of others whose happiness depends entirely on what we do next.
Welcome to Barry’s mad wee world. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
But that’s just the way my brain began to work when I was going into a game like the one that’s waiting for Rangers at Ibrox in just a few days’ time.
I’m not just making this up either. I really mean it.
Barry Ferguson
I would disappear into my own thoughts because I realised that the responsibility was about to be all on us. It was our job to put the spring in the step of our own people, hundreds of thousands of them.
I got it from an early age because I’d be in the stands as a youngster, living it and feeling it. I’d see the sheer joy on the faces of grown men all around me and I’d think to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, look how much this means!’.
I wanted to be able to influence that one day. It was what drove me.
Now you may read this and think to yourself, ‘This guy is tuned to the moon. He’s clearly not quite right!’. And I get that.
But all I know is that it worked for me. So by the time kick-off came around I was ready to run through brick walls for the jersey.
Yes, as the days ticked on, I would be up and down like a yo-yo. I’d go quiet one minute and then want to talk to anyone who would listen to me the next. Sometimes I’d sit in a corner and talk to myself using the kind of language this paper could not possibly put into print.
By match day I was climbing the walls to get out there.
And I’d spend a lot of time explaining to my team mates just why it mattered so much. I needed them to know why anything less than all three points was simply not acceptable. I needed them to know that this game is everything.
And that’s how it feels all over again going into the weekend because we’re back in a situation where winning this one game of football can have such a huge impact on where the title ends up this season.
And isn’t that the be-all-and-end-all? Wasn’t that the target when this team came together for the first day of pre-season, even if it seems like a lifetime ago now given all that’s gone on over these last eight months?
They have to remember what they’ve been through to get to this point. They have to remember that they were being written off as no-hopers back in September.
And they have to realise that they have this opportunity right in front of them to prove how wrong everyone was. All they have to do now is just reach out and grab it.
I’m not saying that a victory on Sunday will kill Celtic off. I do think Rangers will win it but even then I still believe this race could go down to the last weekend of the season. But it would put a massive dent in Celtic’s aspirations and set Rangers up for a Scottish Cup tie against them just one week later.
If that prospect doesn’t light a fire in your belly then you’re in the wrong game and playing for the wrong club!
Trust me, some of the new guys will never have experienced anything like what they are about to be thrown into. They should relish every single second of it.
Andreas Skov Olsen of Rangers
The likes of Tochi Chukwuani, Tuur Rommens, Andreas Skov Olsen and Ryan Naderi will be blown away by it. But they have to embrace the madness and thrive on it because they’ll never sample the same intensity anywhere else.
Plug into it. Breathe in the energy from the stands. Let it fill your whole body to the point of fever pitch.
I’m almost jealous of them, even though I was lucky enough to live through so many of these fixtures during my own playing days.
Put it this way, I’ll be there in the stands on Sunday with my two boys and I genuinely cannot wait for it.
The plan is to get to the stadium for 8am so we can soak in the whole experience and I guarantee, when I walk in through those front doors, I’ll have all the same feelings inside that I had before my very first time.
It doesn’t get any bigger or better than this. And that’s why, one way or another, these Rangers players have a responsibility to make sure they come out on the right end of the result.
Not just for themselves. But for everyone else whose happiness depends on it and the people who help make playing for the club such a very special honour.