EVEN in the madcap world of football management, where there is never a shortage of candidates for any vacancy that arises, there are few people are few who would trade places with Graeme Murty at around lunchtime tomorrow.

Murty will, for the second time this year, send his Rangers side out to play Celtic in a Ladbrokes Premiership game at Parkhead which not even their most one-eyed follower gives them any hope of drawing never mind winning.

The gulf in quality between the city rivals is vast when the Ibrox club are at full strength, but with Graham Dorrans, Kenny Miller and Lee Wallace, senior players with vast experience of such fixtures, all out injured and Ryan Jack, who has been arguably their most impressive performer, also set to be sidelined their task appears almost futile.

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Rangers have been unable to overcome Hamilton and St. Johnstone at home as well as Dundee and Kilmarnock away in recent weeks so what chance do they have against the might of Celtic? Another emphatic home victory is widely anticipated.

Yet, Murty will survey the bedlam around him as he takes his place in the technical area in front of the away dugout shortly before noon and consider himself privileged to be there.

The former Scotland internationalist revealed that pride was his overriding emotion back in March during his first stint as interim manager when he oversaw a surprise 1-1 draw against the same opponents at the same venue in almost identical circumstances and he expects himself to feel exactly the same this time around.

“I wasn’t bewildered by it, I was appreciative of it,” he said. “David McCallum (the youth team coach who assisted him during his time in charge of the first team last season) and myself spoke just before kick-off, as we were standing there and taking everything in, and said to each other that not many people in the world have had this view.

“So I’m going to appreciate the fact that not many people have stood there as Rangers manager at the home of Celtic. It’s an incredible place to stand, an incredible honour to have. But we want to walk off the pitch positively, having represented ourselves properly and having done a good job.”

The fact that Murty’s side was able to pull off an upset on the last occasion they travelled across the city to play Brendan Rodgers’s team has given some hope that he can do so again.

Murty, who was upgraded from interim to temporary manager until the end of the season last week, believes he will be able to draw on the invaluable lessons he learned in that game, which finished level after Clint Hill cancelled out a first-half Stuart Armstrong strike late on, tomorrow.

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The 43-year-old will certainly attempt to instil the same positive mental attitude in his players and devise a game plan which works just as effectively. But he was at pains to point out that both sides have changed since that day and this is a completely different challenge.

“I can take solace from having been involved with it before,” he said. “Having experienced the spectacle, the noise and the pageantry, I can be more focused on delivering for the players.

“We can take positives from the collective spirit we showed. We managed to put on a good display. But it is something we have to build upon. It is not something that is just going to replicate itself. We have to understand they are slightly different, we are slightly different and we have to perform in a hostile place.

“What we have to be able to do as a squad and as a coaching team is to make sure our players are prepared fully for the mental challenge.”

Murty will stress to his charges that they have, despite not enjoying consistent form in what has been another turbulent season, beaten Aberdeen, Hibs and Hearts away this season before they take to the field against Celtic.

“The Old Firm itself brings a whole different number of challenges,” he said. “But I will mention those games to the guys. To go to Murrayfield, Pittodrie and Easter Road and know you can perform at a level, show different qualities at different times, is positive. It’s a question of pulling all those things together and we have to do it for 90 minutes.”

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Celtic have responded well to their record-breaking 69 game unbeaten domestic run coming to an end against Hearts at Tynecastle earlier this month - they have since beaten Partick Thistle 2-0, Aber-deen 3-0 and Dundee 2-0 – and Murty expects them to present a formidable test.

“If you show any weakness, frailty or indecisiveness, then Celtic have the tools and personnel to capitalise,” he said. “So we have to make sure that for the whole extent of the game, we are at our top level.”

“I’m not going to sit here and say Celtic are this or that, or that we see weakness. We understand their strengths, we understand what they are good at.

“We understand where people have actually got at them. We need to make sure that when we walk onto the pitch, we are ready to deal with their threats, but are also ready to provide a threat of our own.

“If we recognised where we can do that and try to exploit those, I’d prefer to concentrate on us rather than talking about our opponent. That’s a standard theme throughout our pre-match briefings.

“We will have to be very focused and concentrated. We will have to be brave to get on the ball and play when opportunities do present themselves. We will have to be selfless, to maybe go that extra yard to help someone who is out of position.

“But I’m also looking for people who relish the challenge, not just accept it and sit back and take it. I want people who roll their sleeves up, relish that challenge and put in their best performance.

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“It’s a great learning curve for me. I learned a lot from preparing the team for the game there last time. We have a shortened time scale this time around. But we have to make sure our guys understand some of the flexibility Celtic show. We have to show an understanding of what we are going to do to counter that.

“That’s down to us as a coaching staff, but also down to the players when they step on the pitch. When they see something, they have to react in a positive way so we can deal with whatever they throw at us.

“I thought the players showed flexibility and a bit of leadership on Wednesday night. We are going to need leaders on Saturday. We are going to need people who can help their mate out and make them better. At a place like Celtic Park, we are definitely going to need good players to make the players around them better.”

Murty may be missing Dorrans, Miller and Wallace, but in Bruno Alves, the 94-times capped Portuguese centre half, he has a player who will be more than able to cope with the magnitude of the occasion and intensity of the atmosphere.

Alves missed the last meeting between Celtic and Rangers back in September – controversially as he flew to Madrid to receive treatment from Cristiano Ronaldo’s physio – but his manager is hoping for a big performance from the defender and many others.

“Nothing fazes Bruno,” he said. “He has played in some of the biggest games in the world. So you know what you are going to get from him in terms of his emotional stability. He gives that calmness, that aura of authority, if you will.

“But I don’t think it’s fair to put the onus just on one person, although people can feed off that. It’s up to other people to step up to that level and make sure that they lead also.

“And you can lead in different ways, you can lead physically, you can lead vocally, you can lead by winning a tackle. There is a young man in the middle of the pitch, Ross McCrorie, who leads in a completely different way from Bruno. Ryan Jack leads in a completely different way. Wes Foderingham leads in a completely different way.

“We are going to need a team full of people who are capable of doing that, in their own way, to add to the collective.”