FORMER Rangers striker Kris Boyd thinks his old team will have a great chance of winning next month’s Old Firm derby – because Celtic have got too many players. Boyd reckons having a smaller squad has worked in Mark Warburton’s favour, with the Gers manager having no choice but to turn to the same group of players week after week. Celtic, in contrast, tend to change their line-up from one game to the next and Boyd thinks that inconsistency could be their downfall.

He said: “It’s a difficult one to say who is the stronger side from one to 11. I’d say Rangers for the way they’ve gone about everything and the fact they’ve not changed the way they’ve played. Rangers players are turning up knowing who’s going to play because they’ve got a tight-knit unit which can go a long way. Celtic must have about 100 players sitting in there. For a long time it seems like they’ve been saving them up.

“They’ve signed so many players and not used them for some reason. For me that brings problems in itself because you have a number of players not really doing anything apart from training. Most of the Rangers players are going to training now knowing if they are playing at the weekend whereas a lot of the Celtic boys know they aren’t going to play which isn’t easy. I’ve been there myself when you know you aren’t getting a game at the end of the week and it festers away at you. You can become a negative influence in the whole group. If you have X amount of them not playing, it can harm you.”

Boyd is surprised that Celtic have not taken advantage of Rangers’ absence from the top division for the last few years to expand the gap between them and their great rivals. The Kilmarnock player added: “If it was me at Celtic, I’d have gone down a different route, bringing in boys that would have gone with you for the long haul rather than the amount of foreigners they’ve brought in. We can say they’ve hit the jackpot with a few. I’m not the brightest but the negatives outweigh the positives in terms of the signing policy. The amount of bodies they’ve got in there right now is scary. Have Celtic just banked the money and are ready to go again? I don’t know. Who knows, they might just have put the money aside and are waiting on Rangers coming back up to go and strengthen.”

Boyd was still a Rangers player the last time the sides met in last year’s League Cup semi-final. Celtic were comfortable winners that day but the striker thinks there have been many changes at Ibrox since then. He added: “There were so many problems connected with Rangers last year as well, but I don’t think those problems are there this year. There are still off-field issues, but the one thing Mark Warburton has done is kept that group together. They believe they can beat anyone.”

- Kris Boyd was speaking at a William Hill media event. William Hill is the proud sponsor of the Scottish Cup.