These Old Firm games are still Scottish football’s very own representation of warring tribes, with their clashes of culture, tradition and values, but sometimes you just want someone to offer a reminder of the need for football. Alas, Ally McCoist was denied his heartfelt wish at Ibrox on Saturday. The Rangers assistant manager had talked of his desire for “a great game with great goals” but it consisted of little of that in the end.

McCoist, however, like almost everyone else in the Rangers camp, was ecstatic beyond description by the time the dust settled on this frantic stampede. In beating Celtic, Walter Smith’s men are now six points clear in the race for the Clydesdale Bank Premier League title and, though Smith was cagey about such an advantage later, his team is now reaching out to grasp the flag. If Rangers lose this 2007-08 championship it will be viewed as some sort of disintegration, but there is no hint of it.

Smith cuts a smooth and equable figure these days. Now 60, the Rangers manager has done and seen too much to get overly hot and bothered and, just as setbacks for him are no longer the stuff of depression, so also he takes such wins as Saturday’s within his easy and modest stride. “Celtic are still the yardstick for us – they have been the dominant team these past few years,” Smith, batting away suggestions that Rangers are finally Scotland’s dominant force again, said.

His denials, however, masked an ominous truth for Celtic. This is now four wins out of four that Smith has recorded over Gordon Strachan’s team since he returned to Ibrox 15 months ago, and it is no freak or fluke. The Rangers manager has come to specialise in that peculiar black art known as making teams hard to beat.

Once again, despite much griping from the sidelines, Smith sent Rangers out at home playing with a lone striker, this time in Jean-Claude Darcheville.

In days of old, when some Rangers supporters felt the British Empire began and ended at their stadium, such a tactic would have been a blasphemy – an act of timidity – and there is still much mumping and moaning over Smith’s strategy. Yet he has persisted with it, flooding his team’s midfield with grafters as well as architects, and the upshot is that Rangers remain on the trail of four trophies, including the Uefa Cup. Amid their spluttering frustration, some Rangers fans actually admit to being quite pleased.

In their wars of attrition these Old Firm games tend to have a random rhythm about them where the pendulum swings one way, then the other before a victorious team finally emerges. It was ever thus at Ibrox, where Celtic could, and should, have held the lead at half-time, but instead found themselves traipsing inside a goal down to Kevin Thomson’s marvellous execution past Artur Boruc after 44 minutes. In a largely undistinguished game Thomson’s strike was the one real moment of craft and calm amid the bedlam.

While more of a din than a football match was taking place, the referee, Stuart Dougal, did his level best to keep an eagle eye on all that was going on. Dougal, a likeable bloke, is one of Scotland’s more intriguing referees, with his known propensity on the field to tell lippy players where to go, in something approaching the sort of language they will understand.

A favourite ploy of Dougal’s is the flick of the raised thumb – as in “away and take a **** to yourself” – and he used this trick numerously and to some effect on Saturday while doling out eight yellow cards. Not every caution seemed necessary, but on the other hand, would you care to try it yourself?

There was something distinctly plodding about Celtic’s efforts to prise Rangers open – a state of affairs borne out in the fact that, in the entire second half, and while 1-0 down, the best Celtic could muster was a 25-yard effort by Andreas Hinkel which wasn’t so much created as simply flung at Rangers from afar. The German’s shot seemed to be heading for the top corner of the net before Allan McGregor fisted the ball over.

Scott McDonald, on course to score 30-plus goals in his maiden Celtic season, was dropped by Strachan, with Georgios Samaras joining Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink in attack. The Greece striker, it has to be said, did not seem to relish the Old Firm aggro. As both David Weir and Carlos Cuellar aggressively but fairly set about him, the handsome and demure Samaras sometimes resembled a male model who had inadvertently stumbled from the catwalk on to the football field. To some Celtic fans he appeared a frustrating shirker.

Rangers employed a midfield panzer division of Thomson, Barry Ferguson, Steven Davis, Christian Dailly and Lee McCulloch, and it was Celtic’s sore duty to try to bludgeon their way through them. On the rare occasions when the visitors managed it, such as in Samaras’s pass to Brown that released the Celtic midfielder inside the Rangers box, McGregor either made the save or, as on another occasion, Brown appeared to stand on the ball just as he was about to shoot. In such moments you realised it would not be Celtic’s day.

On more than one occasion Rangers used the tactic of launching aerial missiles towards McCulloch, whose brawny athleticism would then seek to nod the ball into the path of Darcheville, a Frenchman whose constantly-tweaking hamstrings simply can’t cope with his blistering pace. Darcheville started this game well but then faded before being replaced by Nacho Novo after 67 minutes. In eight months with Rangers the Frenchman has yet to complete a 90 minutes.

Darcheville did, though, help to create the move of the game, releasing Thomson with a measured pass into the Celtic box and allowing the Rangers midfield player to beat Boruc with his low shot. Midway through the second half Thomson would leave the field on a stretcher following a strange collision with Samaras, though Smith still described the Rangers midfield player as “a terrific player” later.