In some ways, it all feels a little bit sad.
Yes, there will be an inevitable charge of excitement when these teams come out of the tunnel together at kick-off time tomorrow night. And it may even reach a euphoric climax for one of them as they hunt down a place in the next stage of this season’s Europa League. But these moments have grown more and more fleeting for both over the years.
Two of Britain’s biggest sporting institutions, now grappling with a very different status. Living very different lives from the ones they grew so used to not all that very long ago. Manchester United and Rangers may still carry their history with considerable pride. But when they square up to one another tomorrow night at Old Trafford, both of these once mighty clubs will be clinging on to their pasts rather than embracing the here and the now of it all.
This, after all, just might be the worst United side in history according to recently appointed manager Ruben Amorim, who is swimming against the tide in an attempt to prove that he’s not dragging the English giants even deeper into decline. And he’s about to pit his managerial wits against a Rangers boss who has been struggling to keep his own head above water for what feels like the best part of another fairly fruitless, mostly joyless year at Ibrox.
This is not how it used to be for these clubs who were operating a great deal closer to the peak of their powers the last time they came together in European competition and on this very hallowed stage, back in September 2010. With Sir Alex Ferguson nearing the end of his trophy laden 27 years in charge of the English giants and close friend Walter Smith soon to call time on his own spectacular second term in office at Rangers, both clubs were under the stewardship of their very own behemoths.
Ferguson and the late Smith – who worked together at United during the great man’s sabbatical from Ibrox – will most probably be regarded for the rest of time as the most successful modern day managers ever to hold those respective positions. It’s no coincidence that the pair of them have been immortalised with the ultimate tribute of a statue outside the place they regarded as home.
And those bronze effigies now cast a huge shadow over the men now charged with filling the void they left behind.
United haven’t been the same global force since Ferguson stood down almost 12 years ago. Rangers have won only one Scottish title since Smith stepped away from the dugout amid the takeover mayhem of 2011. All manner of willing candidates have since tried to prove themselves to be worthy successors. But each of them has fallen some distance short.
The similarities and parallels connecting these two clubs from different sides of the border are impossible to ignore. Ferguson was the former Rangers striker from Govan who earned a knighthood on the back of his missionary work in Stretford. Smith was the man he turned to and enlisted as an assistant during that period of over ruinous over-ambition when former chairman David Murray made the mistake of thinking the club might be better off without him.
And, in more recent times, the long suffering Rangers support were given a ringside view of the depth and scale of United’s ongoing plight when a teenage Amad Diallo arrived in Glasgow on a short term loan deal having been deemed short of the required Premier League standard.
Over the next six months, Diallo was unable to prove he was even good enough to make a difference in the Scottish top flight. Diallo was billed as some sort of £35m wonder kid. But those who watched his half hearted, largely disinterested cameos were left to wonder only what on earth United were thinking when they splashed out such an enormous fee for him.
As robust and as reliable as a wet fart, he simply could not be trusted to make a telling contribution by manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst which is why he hardly got a game of five-a-sides at Auchenhowie, never mind playing a prominent role on actual match days.
Van Bronckhorst ended that historic campaign struggling against the backdrop of such a monumental list of injuries and suspensions that he deployed midfielder Joe Aribo as an emergency striker in the Europa League final against Eintracht Frankfurt.
Rangers suffered the ultimate agony of losing that one on a penalty shoot-out at the end of 120 sweltering minutes in Seville. But Diallo watched every kick from the bench. And yet now, less than three years on, the little winger appears to have taken on the mantle as the most talented and trustworthy performer in Amorim’s entire squad.
In fairness to the Ivorian, perhaps his short spell at Rangers was simply the wrong move at the wrong time. He most certainly made a much better impression the following season when he was farmed out on another loan to Sunderland and earned a pathway back to Old Trafford as a result.
At that moment the hapless Erik Ten Hag was hoping Diallo might help to dig him out of an ever deepening hole. Instead, for the first few months of this season it was a toss up over whether United’s hierarchy would pull the trigger on the Dutchman before Rangers lost patience and slung Clement to the curb.
In the end, Jim Ratcliffe’s new broom swept Ten Hag out of his misery, while Clement was being spared largely because there was no-one at a rudderless Ibrox with the authority or the wherewithal to fire him. Of course, that all changed when Patrick Stewart left United after 18 years of service to take over as the recently appointed as decision maker in chief at Rangers.
And so this ongoing entwinement between both clubs continues into the present day. Stewart will be back in his old seat tomorrow night but wearing a new tie in the directors’ box. Back in 2010 Smith outfoxed Ferguson by getting out of town with a 0-0 draw. If Clement can match or better that achievement tomorrow night then Stewart will return north feeling he has one less decision on his plate. For the time being at least.