Football
Jim Goodwin says the Scottish Premiership clubs will never compete with the Old Firm financially; he believes they can cause an upset and inflict a third straight defeat on the Ibrox side; watch Aberdeen vs Rangers live on Sky Sports Football on Saturday; kick-off 12pm
By Alison Conroy
Thursday 8 September 2022 19:26, UK
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Aberdeen manager Jim Goodwin believes Celtic and Rangers feeling the financial gulf in the Champions League is a reminder of how hard it is for anyone to compete domestically with the Old Firm.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst admitted after Rangers’ 4-0 defeat to Ajax that they would need “hundreds of millions” to compete with the top teams in Europe.
Celtic suffered a 3-0 defeat to Champions League winners Real Madrid after passing up early chances in their group opener in Glasgow on Tuesday night.
Goodwin believes they are feeling what the rest of Scotland’s top-flight managers contend with constantly.
“I always find it funny when managers from either side of the Old Firm talk about financial gulfs,” the Aberdeen manager told Sky Sports News.
“Welcome to the world of the other Scottish Premiership clubs.
“Here at Aberdeen I’ve got good resources available to me, but not at the same level as what Celtic and Rangers have got available to them.”
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Rangers travel to Pittodrie on Saturday, live on Sky Sports, looking for a morale-boosting win after consecutive 4-0 defeats to Celtic and the Dutch champions.
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Goodwin, though, is confident his side are capable of piling more misery on the Ibrox side.
“You can look at it both ways. Rangers obviously won’t be in a great place at the moment after the last two heavy defeats.
“We would be hoping that would be coming up the road lacking a bit of confidence but I’ve been in this game long enough, especially when are you playing against one of the big teams. The reaction that they tend to get after a night like last night is normally a positive one, so we have to be expecting that.
“We really want to go and get after Rangers from the first whistle, try and get them on the back foot and gain some momentum in the game ourselves and hopefully get an early goal.
“I think we’ve got a team capable of hurting Rangers, I think we’ve shown that in recent weeks. In our first game of the season at Parkhead, we gave a very good account of ourselves, we lost the game 2-0 in the end, but we gained plenty of plaudits and pundits from the opposition praised us for the way we approached the game.”
Aberdeen have scored 11 goals at home in just three Scottish Premiership matches this season while Rangers trail Celtic by five points in the title race.
Watch Aberdeen vs Rangers live on Sky Sports Football on Saturday. Kick-off 12pm.
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