Celtic face Rangers in the next Glasgow Derby at Ibrox in three days time and the contrast in form for both teams could not be more stark.

Celtic beat St Johnstone yesterday afternoon to record another game where Brendan Rodgers’ team kept up their unbeaten start to the domestic campaign, recorded their 52nd goal of the league campaign and another clean sheet which takes the Hoops up to 15 shutouts so far.

To contrast that to their rivals across the city, Rangers’ draw with Motherwell meant that the Ibrox club have now dropped 14 points, conceded over three times the number of goals Celtic have whilst scoring just over half of the Hoops’ total number of strikes.

In short, the top of the Scottish Premiership table does not make great reading for James Tavernier’s team.

Which makes the Rangers captain’s plan to ‘put things right’ against Celtic on Thursday afternoon seem a little bit strange.

James Tavernier tells Rangers to go back to being ‘clinical’ against Celtic

Speaking ahead of the big Glasgow Derby, Tavernier has urged his teammates to return to do what they were doing ‘better’ and be more ‘clinical’ and ‘defend’.

Tavernier told the Daily Record, “It’s an Old F-rm, against our biggest rivals in a home game. So we have to go back to what we were doing better at, before these two games, and that’s play better as a team, the performance of the team, defend as a team and be clinical.

“It’s points that we’re obviously not happy about, and we’re just going to push all the way to the end of the season.

“We were unlucky in the final, going all the way to extra time. So we’re just going to go into that game, and we obviously need to address what we need to do before Thursday, and really look at ourselves as men, as a team, to put things right.”

This statement is right up there with Philippe Clement’s Celtic comments.

Rangers’ recent record ahead of Celtic clash is hardly ‘clinical’

Rangers have only scored more than two goals in the league on three separate occasions this season. In fact, the Ibrox club have won seven of their 11 wins by a margin of just one goal.

And before December’s fixtures kicked in, Clement’s team had kept just two clean sheets in their last nine fixtures over all competitions.

In fact, since August 2021, Rangers have only managed to keep two clean sheets against Celtic in 18 games.

The chances are that Rangers will concede again on Thursday at Ibrox against a free-scoring Celtic team. If Rodgers’ Bhoys score first, it is likely there will only be one outcome.