Can Rangers find a way to dent Celtic domination?

In the wake of the hubbub at Ibrox on Thursday, when Rangers mostly out-played, completely out-fought and almost out-scored Tottenham, Nicolas Raskin, was the subject of many conversations.

The 23-year-old Belgian's recent performances had strongly suggested that he had turned a corner in his fitness and his effectiveness in the Rangers midfield, but the biggest test of that was against a cast of Premier League midfielders brought to Tottenham for a collective spend of nearly £180m.

Raskin passed the examination with aplomb. His intensity, influence and work-rate were at the heart of a driven Rangers. They were up for the fight in a way that the day-trippers from down south were not. Raskin was the best player on the park.

Despite Tottenham's illustrious reputation, Thursday can only really be seen as a warm-up act to the main event, Sunday's League Cup final against Celtic.

Raskin did it against Yves Bissouma, Rodrigo Bentancur and James Maddison. Now he has to do it against Callum McGregor, a feat that has proved way beyond any Rangers man for much of the last three years.

McGregor has hardly operated alone in this period of dominance. Recurring themes are everywhere - Daizen Maeda skinning James Tavernier, Kyogo Furuhashi outfoxing Rangers defenders at one end and Cameron Carter-Vickers bringing authority at the other.

Rangers are emerging from an unhappy spell and are currently nine games unbeaten. Raskin's graft and 22-year-old Hamza Igamane's goals have helped brighten Rangers' world.

But we have been in this place before. In the last three seasons, Rangers have gone into Old Firm games on the back of unbeaten runs of eight, nine, 13, 14 and 14 games only to run into a Celtic wall.

Celtic are better than the version of Spurs that appeared at Ibrox. As enthused as he was by his team's spirit, that fact will not be lost on Philippe Clement. He is hard-bitten by reality in these games, after all. He bears the scars of battle with Brendan Rodgers' team - five games, four defeats, one draw, which he claimed as a moral victory. Nice try, Philippe.

Rodgers, by comparison, has lost one game against Rangers in 19. Rangers have not scored against Celtic in almost four hours of football. Rangers have not led Celtic in any game, league or cup, in nine hours, a run that stretches back to Michael Beale's time in charge.

Since this latest spell of total dominance began with the arrival of Ange Postecoglou in Glasgow there's been 17 meetings. Of those 1,560 minutes (including extra time in the Scottish Cup semi-final of 2022), Rangers have been in front for just 154 minutes - and 85 of those minutes were in the dead rubber derby two seasons ago when Celtic had already clinched the Premiership title.

Rangers have scored first in only three of those 17 games since Postecoglou, and then Rodgers, took a vice-like grip on things.

Kyogo, with eight goals, has been the headline grabber on many of these days, but McGregor has been the man who has tied it all together. Very few Rangers teams have had the first clue how to stop him setting the tempo and shaping the outcome.

And so, when a seasoned observer of the Ibrox scene stopped for a chat on Thursday, his mantra for Sunday was all about scoring first, something they haven't done in an Old Firm derby of proper import - apologies to all Rangers people, but the 3-0 in May 2023 was as immaterial as these games get - since April 2022. Aaron Ramsey was the scorer.

Scoring first did not do Rangers much good that day, of course. They still got beaten. At times, in chunks of games or for whole games, Rangers have played well. They performed combatively in the Scottish Cup final last season, but lost. They were decent last May after John Lundstram got sent-off, but lost 2-1.

They showed great resilience in the game that preceded that and drew 3-3. They probably should have won at Ibrox in January 2023, but Kyogo equalised two minutes from the end.

Rangers have not won an Old Firm derby in six attempts. They have one win in 13 and three in 17 going back three years. Are we seeing a more convincing Rangers coming together? Possibly, but Celtic are always the true test of that and they remain hot favourites.

Somehow, Clement will have to make sure his boys are at the same emotional pitch at Hampden as they were at Ibrox while adding more accuracy and more ruthlessness in their game.

Rangers are sweating on the availability of John Souttar while attempting to plan for Old Firm whack-a-mole. Deal with Maeda and Kyogo pops up, deal with Kyogo and Nicolas Kuhn becomes their problem, deal with Kuhn and Adam Idah comes off the bench and does them at the death, as he did at Hampden in May.

Thursday surely removed the last of the wolves from Clement's door, the snarlers who wanted him gone. But he knows, as everybody else knows, that there is only way to get rid of them permanently and that is to put one on their biggest rivals.

For his own reputation and for the momentum of his team. Rangers really need to win this trophy. What Rangers need has never been much of a concern to Celtic, of course. With grace or with grunt, they nearly always find a way to win. And it's hard to see them stopping now.