How good are (were) the Old Firm teams?

I’ve always been curious about the debate concerning if Celtic or Rangers should be allowed to join the English leagues. Obviously this debate has died down lately with the collapse of Rangers but I remain interested to know exactly what level the Scottish league is at compared to the one south of the border.
The collapse of Rangers has resulted in a large number of their players leaving and signing for other clubs; if we examine which clubs they have joined could we ascertain how good the team was as a whole? We can also look at recent transfers from the Old Firm and see how well they did in England, Kris Boyd, Danny Wilson, Nikica Jelavic and Ki Sung-Yueng all come to mind. Hopefully looking at all this will serve to answer the question: how good are (were) the Old Firm teams?
You’d like to think that Scottish and English football are very similar, as opposed to, say, Spanish football which is clearly more technical and less physical. Thus, the cultural adaption when transferring from a Scottish team to an English team should be marginal, if not negligible. If a player moves from Scotland to England they do not have to learn a new language, they do not have to adapt to a massively different style of play. Because of this there should be less transfers that fail due to the player not adapting to the cultural change; this happens a lot when players move to the English leagues and so makes it harder to compare the two leagues in terms of ability. After all, how can you compare the difference between two leagues if the culture change is what determines if a player succeeds or not? Because of the similarities between English and Scottish football, you can say that if a player fails to succeed when crossing the border it is a result of not having the required ability to perform in that team/division, therefore making his original team/division weaker than his new one.
So, I’ll give a quick run through of a few recent transfers and then look at the players that left Rangers in the summer.
Kris Boyd – Rangers to Middlesbrough – July 2010
Boyd left Rangers as the highest scorer in Scottish Premier League history with 164 goals and joined a Championship club, which may say everything that you need to know. However that’s not it, he was sold to Eskişehirspor the following summer after a short loan spell at Nottingham Forest. What else can you say apart from that he was a complete flop? Prolific goalscorer in Scotland, couldn’t make it in England’s second division.
Nikica Jelavic – Rangers to Everton – January 2012
This is the case of another prolific striker leaving Rangers for England, however Jelavic has seemed to be a success in the Premiership. 18 goals in 43 games for Everton isn’t a bad tally. He seems to have made it at one of the better teams in English football, a sign that the Old Firm have good players after all?
Danny Wilson – Rangers to Liverpool – July 2010
Wilson left Rangers with a host of personal honours; Scottish FWA Young Player of the Year award, Scottish PFA Young Player of the Year award and he was also declared the Rangers Young Player of the Year. He had begun to cement his place in the first team at Rangers yet has struggled to break through at Liverpool, with other defenders like Andre Wisdom, Jack Robinson, Martin Kelly and Jon Flanagan being promoted to the senior squad instead of himself. He is currently on loan at Hearts.
Ki Sung-Yueng – Celtic to Swansea – August 2012
The first signing from Celtic to be mentioned. This talented midfielder has started his career well in England (sort of, we’ll say Swansea is in England for now), making 28 appearances so far. He has made himself an important part of the Swansea team, a team which you could accurately describe as a mid-table team.
Now these players were some of the most talented players in their respective squads so it is not an indication of how good the entire team is, although we can assert the upper limit of an Old Firm team’s ability. If Ki Sung-Yueng and Jelavic can be successes at good Premiership teams, then we can say for sure that this is the best that Celtic or Rangers could achieve if they played in the English leagues. Challenging for Europe would be out of the question.
Now, a quick look at a few players who left Rangers over the summer and their statistics for this season. These players all featured in the squad for their final game of last season, a 4-0 victory over St. Johnstone in May.
Allan McGregor – Besiktas – 17 appearances
Steven Whittaker – Norwich – 9 appearances 1 goal
Kirk Broadfoot – Blackpool – 12 appearances 1 goal
Maurice Edu – Bursaspor (on loan from Stoke) – 1 appearance for both
Sone Aluko – Hull – 23 appearances 8 goals
Rhys McCabe – Sheffield Wednesday – 18 appearances 1 goal
Alejandro Bedoya – Helsingborg – 9 appearances 1 goal (now a free agent)
David Healy – Bury – 8 appearances 1 goal
Now I don’t intend to hide from the fact that many different factors determine how well a player performs at a new club, however I believe that looking at the clubs that ex-Rangers players have joined does give a rough outline of how good the team could have been. While you may point to Celtic’s Champions League campaign which is still on-going despite the group stages being over, a usual stopping point for Scottish teams, it seems that this is a result of incredible overachievement rather than natural ability. I don’t intend to take anything away from their fantastic European run, especially the victory over Barcelona, I just wish to state my belief that it is an anomaly in a series of pieces of evidence which point to the Old Firm being level with a good Championship club.
This is of course only my opinion, but the list above contains quite a few Championship clubs. Yes a few players have left the Old Firm and become good Premiership players, Steven Whittaker, Jelavic and Ki Sung-Yueng in particular. However these represent the tip of the iceberg, the best to come out of Scotland, and are a step above the other players in the Celtic and Rangers teams. I used to be of the belief that Celtic and Rangers could compete for the Premiership if they were allowed into the English leagues.
After thinking about the topic and researching it I have come to the conclusion that if Celtic (and the Rangers of last season) were to start playing in England they could achieve a mid-table finish in the Premiership at an absolute maximum. For me, the higher reaches of the Championship or the bottom of the Premiership is where I see them realistically. I’m not forgetting Celtics Champions League run when I reach this conclusion. After all, Middlesbrough and Fulham are average teams to also have had success in Europe; sometimes some teams just overachieve.
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