{"id":588910,"date":"2026-04-06T10:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T10:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/588910\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T10:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T10:23:13","slug":"rangers-title-position-is-borderline-absurdity-but-monumental-craziness-lies-ahead-in-deranged-campaign-keith-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/588910\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers title position is borderline absurdity but monumental craziness lies ahead in deranged campaign \u2013 Keith Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our man has his say after yet more drama in a Scottish Premiership season that has seen the top three all win on the same weekend just once\"dailyrecord\"<\/p>\n

06:00, 06 Apr 2026Updated 07:54, 06 Apr 2026<\/p>\n

Content cannot be displayed without consent<\/p>\n

Eventually – sooner or later – this entire top flight campaign will have to be locked away, sectioned off and diagnosed as clinically insane.<\/p>\n

It cannot continue to rampage around indefinitely, up and down the country, causing unlimited chaos like some kind of unhinged lunatic.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a wonderful kind of madness. Of course it is. And, for as long as it lasts, it\u2019ll be cherished for exactly what it is.<\/p>\n

A blood and snotters brand of bampottery the likes of which may never have been seen before.<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019re expecting it to all suddenly start falling into place or to follow any semblance of logic then here\u2019s a word of advice. Don\u2019t bother. You\u2019re wasting your time.<\/p>\n

At this point nothing any of us can do or say is going to make it make sense. It\u2019s already flown too far over the cuckoo\u2019s nest.<\/p>\n

And Sunday was just another magnificently loopy insight into the monumental craziness which almost certainly lies ahead.<\/p>\n

On a day when rays of golden sunshine punctuated showers of cascading snowfall, the team which has spent the last seven months perched at the top of the league, made the short trip to face a Livingston side which has been relegation fodder for every bit as long.<\/p>\n

That Hearts dropped two points<\/a> and went down to ten men but still returned to first place just sums this season up.<\/p>\n

That Celtic<\/a> followed up by dominating Dundee for 45 minutes only to come dangerously close to drawing a game they probably ought to have won<\/a> comfortably by putting on another schizophrenic performance of their own?<\/p>\n

Well, that just underlines the nature of the meltdown which has led to the champions losing the plot this season and resorting to asking Martin O\u2019Neill <\/a>to minimise the contagion. At the age of 74.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Celtic manager Martin O’Neill<\/p>\n

Once again the old master just about got away with it as sub Kelechi Iheanacho smashed home a late winner to keep Celtic right in the thick of it, with only six games remaining.<\/p>\n

What comes next is now anyone\u2019s guess but Hearts now lead by just a single point and all that kind of slender margin guarantees is another spike in stress and anxiety. We\u2019ll all be nervous wrecks by the time this is over.<\/p>\n

One point. That\u2019s all that now separates the long term leaders and pace makers from a team in second place which, not all that long ago, was so far out of sight it appeared to have reduced itself to an accident prone irrelevance.<\/p>\n

Rangers<\/a> have not suddenly become perfect. Far from it. They remain a very long way from that.<\/p>\n

And yet, even though Andrew Cavenagh and his friends from the 49ers, are only starting out on this journey and despite the fact that Danny Rohl\u2019s side remains a work in progress, there is now a genuine case to be made for their title credentials.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a borderline absurdity that a group of players which might have been struggling to make the top six had it continued under Russell Martin\u2019s management might now go on to become champions but then again, if such a thing was every likely to happen then it might as well be in the right here and now of it.<\/p>\n

So when Rohl\u2019s side jumped into pole position on Saturday night, albeit with a largely unconvincing win at home to Dundee United, it did feel like a significant moment.<\/p>\n

It was the first time since hitting the front in September that Hearts had been dislodged from the top spot in the Premiership table and it piled a very new kind of pressure onto Derek McInnes and his players as they made through a flurry of blizzards on the short trip to West Lothian on Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n

That they found themselves a goal down after just four minutes cranked up the drama to 11.<\/p>\n

Stevie May\u2019s early opener might have caused panic to sweep through three sides of a ground which had been taken over for the afternoon by a travelling army dressed in maroon and white.<\/p>\n

But, quite remarkably given the nature of the circumstances, it did not. Fans and players alike, Hearts simply kept calm and carried on.<\/p>\n

And then the main reason why they stand such a strong chance of completing this fairytale emerged onto centre stage.<\/p>\n

Before Sunday, Lawrence Shankland hadn\u2019t started a game since the middle of January when he damaged a hamstring during a Scottish Cup defeat against Falkirk.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve just about held it together despite the skipper\u2019s absence but when he was needed most of all Shankland came up with a bullet of a header to level the scores before half time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lawrence Shankland celebrates after heading home to make it 1-1(Image: Fred Palmer\/Focus Images Ltd\/Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

Not long after he fizzed a half volley inches wide of the target before having another effort charged down inside the Livingston box.<\/p>\n

In other words, Shankland was running all over this match like a man possessed, assisted in no small part by his wing man, Claudio Braga.<\/p>\n

This pair boast the kind of combined firepower which is unmatched by either Celtic or Rangers for that matter.<\/p>\n

And with Shankland back on the scoresheet so soon after returning from the treatment room there is reason to believe this two pronged attack will be the biggest difference maker over these next few weeks.<\/p>\n

Braga appeared to have completed the turnaround when he headed home early in the second half after his partner and captain had laid one on a plate for him.<\/p>\n

So for Livingston to respond in the manner they did once again made a mockery of any sort of logic or reason.<\/p>\n

Lewis Smith levelled the scores with 58 minutes on the clock, which gave Hearts more than half an hour to dig themselves out of a hole. If anything, they were fortunate that it did not become deeper and darker before Marc Leonard was sent off for a rugby tackle on Robbie Muirhead to slam the tin lid on Derek McInnes\u2019 day.<\/p>\n

Up the road at Dens Park, Dundee also ended up with only ten men after Ryan Astley was sent packing but only after Iheancho had made a dramatic, match winning entrance from O\u2019Neill\u2019s bench.<\/p>\n

Celtic could have started the game trailing Hearts by eight points. They ended it just three behind.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how utterly deranged this whole campaign is becoming as it thunders on towards the big finale. Make it make sense? Don\u2019t be daft. This is now officially silly season. And the sillier it gets the better it gets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our man has his say after yet more drama in a Scottish Premiership season that has seen the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,18282,188850,596,188852,84844,194354,113572,11603,8998,9003,85,238220],"class_list":{"0":"post-588910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celtic-fc","11":"tag-derek-mcinnes","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-hearts-fc","14":"tag-kelechi-iheanacho","15":"tag-lawrence-shankland","16":"tag-martin-oneill","17":"tag-premium","18":"tag-rangers-fc","19":"tag-scottish-premiership","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-steven-pressley"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}