Lorenzo Amoruso in Rangers silence breaker as he warns Celtic the SPFL will be after them

The former Rangers captain insists every team wanted to beat his side in 1998 and believes it will be the same for the Hoops next season.

Former Rangers skipper Lorenzo Amoruso has warned Celtic every team in Scotland will try to stop them bagging Ten in a Row.

Amoruso was part of the Ibrox side’s failed quest to secure a Scottish record 10th successive top-flight crown in his debut season in Glasgow after signing for Walter Smith in 1997. The Italian quickly became convinced that the entire top flight was conspiring to stop Smith’s team in its tracks.

And now he expects history to be repeated when Neil Lennon’s side get back down to business after being awarded with title No.9 during the coronavirus lockdown.

In an exclusive Record Sport interview Amoruso said: “It was my first season in Glasgow and one of the first things I realised was how badly every other team wanted to beat us. It seemed very obvious to me they tried harder against Rangers than any other team.

“Everyone wants to beat the big guys and Rangers are always the big guys. But that particular season I felt everyone was trying even harder than normal.

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“I didn’t play much of the season because I was injured from the start. But I could see it with my own eyes. They gave everything against Rangers, more than they gave against Celtic.

“Beating the team that is trying to get to 10 in a row is complicated – it’s not easy to achieve. But that’s the problem Celtic now face. The same problem we had back then.

“When you play against nine-in-a-row champions it is normal for any player, if he is ambitious, to want to show them, ‘There is no life for you here today!’.

“You want to beat them and make a piece of history. Maybe for a week, maybe for two weeks.

“But if you beat Celtic next season then everyone will have a piece of history. That’s the way it is.

“Even for the managers, the target is obvious. Everyone is working for their own future and if they do well with their own teams, beating Celtic or Rangers, their name and reputation gets bigger.

“Maybe they have ambition to coach at Rangers and Celtic one day. If they have that kind of mentality then a harder life is waiting for Celtic at the beginning of next season.”

A shock 1-0 win for Kilmarnock at Ibrox effectively hammered the final nail into Smith’s quest to complete the 10 and set up Celtic’s last-day triumph at home to St Johnstone.

But Amoruso said: “The Kilmarnock game was a consequence of the defeat we suffered in Aberdeen two weeks earlier when I was red-carded. There was a lot of provocations from the Aberdeen players on the field but also in the newspapers.

“We knew we should have won because we were definitely stronger. But we got dragged into a kind of controversial mentality. We allowed it to become a battle and lost the match because of it.

“When Kilmarnock came to Ibrox, they played a good game. For some reason we couldn’t perform. It was like the Aberdeen game had taken something out of us.

“In the dressing room afterwards there was a lot of frustration, a lot of anger. We were not happy because we knew it was down to ourselves.”

Amoruso insists Celtic’s players could struggle to cope with the strain of trying to make history.

He said: “For Rangers the pressure is always there. It doesn’t matter about Celtic and 10 in a row. That just gives the players another reason to try to beat them.

“The bigger pressure is on the team which has been winning. Celtic have won nine titles but four of them were without Rangers in the league.

“Celtic know Rangers are getting closer because they showed it on the pitch. But they will have problems against the other teams too, just like we had all those years ago.”