Celtic vs Rangers: Kris Boyd's Preview of the First Old Firm Showdown of the Season

The highly anticipated first Old Firm clash of the season is here, with Celtic looking to extend their lead over Rangers to five points in the Scottish Premiership race.

They meet at Parkhead on Sunday, live on with a 12.30pm kick-off, as Philippe Clement looks to secure his first win against Brendan Rodgers.

Celtic have made a winning start to their title defence and have Champions League football to look forward to, while Rangers have already dropped points and failed to qualify for Europe's top competition.

' Kris Boyd assesses Rangers' hopes of ending Celtic's dominance in the fixture...

You look at Rangers going across the city in recent times, they've struggled. There's no getting away from it and they're going to have to find a way to start getting results again.

Rangers' head-to-head vs Celtic hasn't been good enough and they're going to have to address that if they're going to be successful.

Philippe Clement has spoken about how Rangers will get better game by game and I think that's happening, but you're already behind Celtic and Celtic will be heavy favourites going into the first Old Firm game of the season.

There has to be the realisation that Rangers need to start churning out performances on a regular basis and putting a run of results together.

There's no doubt Saturday's performance will give them belief and confidence, but Ross County were very poor and I don't expect Celtic to be that poor. I hope they are, but I can't see it!

Rangers have to frustrate Celtic

Rangers have to go and try and frustrate Celtic to start with and see where that takes them. If you go and try and take Celtic on at their own game at home, it's going to be very difficult to come out on top.

We've seen it before when you're underdogs, you go and frustrate a team and you're able to nick something. I think that's where Rangers are at the moment.

Celtic have started the season very well, they've been scoring goals and moving the ball well.

They've got options with Adam Idah and Kyogo at the top end of the pitch. They're in a good place, Reo Hatate has been excellent since the start of the season, Callum McGregor and Daizen Maeda have been causing real problems.

Celtic are heavy favourites

You've got the potential now to be five points behind Celtic after the weekend and with four games in it's definitely not great.

The recruitment, players leaving, performances, the Champions League exit - it's been small things adding up and a lot of Rangers fans are at the stage where they aren't happy. If it goes badly at the weekend they'll voice their opinions again because it hasn't been good enough.

They're going to have to hope Celtic are off it a little bit and they have to bring their A-game if they're going to get anything.

Celtic are heavy favourites and rightly so with the way they've started, but you just never know when an Old Firm game comes around.

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