Scottish Premiership 2019/20: Rangers vs Celtic – tactical analysis

With the 2019/20 Scottish Premiership campaign now over and with the new date for the start of the 2020/21 season on the horizon, each of the clubs will be looking back and evaluating their teams performance looking at areas to improve upon/work on before the start of the new season. The main focus for many is always the title race and this season at the top, Celtic and Rangers fought valiantly before Rangers were unable to gain points in crucial games as Celtic opened a 13 point gap and won the title.

As part of a match analysis series, we will look back into these crucial games specifically dissecting Rangers’ league losses in the 2019/20 campaign evaluating the areas that enable teams to overcome the Gers. The first match analysis piece in this series will analyse the first Old Firm game in September as Celtic ran out 2-0 winners at Ibrox. In this tactical analysis, we will look at the tactics of both teams, and discuss the reasons for Rangers coming up short on the day.

Lineups

Both Rangers and Celtic came into this game with a 100% record with three wins in the league but with this being such a big game, Steven Gerrard and Neil Lennon changed personnel in their team in a bid to lay down the first marker. Rangers lined up in their familiar 4-3-3 formation under Gerrard and the former Liverpool player made three changes to his side that won St. Mirren 1-0 the previous week.

Gerrard made two changes to the left side of his defensive line with Nikola Katić and Jon Flanagan coming in for Filip Helander and Borna Barišić  a sure sign he wanted to secure his side defensively. The final change was the addition of Steven Davis to add experience and quality in the single-pivot role, which saw Joe Aribo move into a more advanced left-wing position and as a result, Jordan Jones dropped to bench.

Neil Len