THERE may have been a few who questioned the sanity of Graeme Murty when he agreed to give up the relative calm of his role with the Rangers under-20s and step into the maelstrom that holding down the fort in temporary charge of the Ibrox first team represented. After two defeats in his first two league matches, he may have been having his own doubts too.

In such testing times, the man Murty would normally turn to in search of advice would be his father, Edward, but in this instance he knew he was unlikely to find a sympathetic ear from his old man.

Murty senior, you see, is a diehard Celtic supporter, and he had already made his feelings quite clear to his son over his decision to take the job. Never in their wildest dreams did either of them think Graeme would one day be in the Rangers dugout for an Old Firm derby, and it is fair to say it is probably he who is relishing the prospect more than his pater.

Between a rock and a hard place, is where you will find Edward Murty.

“He’s a Celtic fan,” Graeme said. “All of my father’s family are Celtic fans and they reiterated that to me earlier this year when I met up with them and I got four hours of absolute dog’s abuse. They said ‘what are you doing?’ and I said ‘this is what I’m doing’, and I sat back and accepted their backlash.

“My old man is a great believer in self-determination. He doesn’t believe in telling you anything that he believes should be your belief. We have endless debates on all sorts of subjects, about religion, about sport, most definitely about football, because he has got his way and I have got mine. I’m really thankful that he’s broad-minded enough to give me a chance to go and be my own person.

“He better want me to win! I’m reasonably content that he will want me to do really well. We haven’t had the discussion yet, I’m biding my time. I’ll chat to him about it, then he’ll give me some abuse, give me some stick, but I’ve got no doubt that deep down inside he will want me to do really, really well.”

And it is hard not to wish Murty well. He has a boyish, infectious, enthusiasm ahead of taking on this challenge, likely to be his last in the Rangers dugout.

The early results in his brief tenure may not have gone to plan, but the steeliness that has emerged in this Rangers team in the last few fixtures is something he can take credit for, and no matter where this unexpected detour on his coaching journey may take him, he can look back on the way he has handled both the responsibility - and himself - with a justifiable sense of pride.

For now though, he is determined to savour this moment in one of the brightest spotlights that football has to offer.

“I think this could be a seminal moment in my life, not just in my career as a coach,” he said. “It will be something to look back on and reflect upon. There are very few games in football that can compare to the raw emotion and the feeling around this one. The benefit I’ll take will only be measurable later on.

“I think that this is going to be a unique moment. I’m really grateful for the opportunity and this will go a long way to educating me as to whether I want to do this full time or whether I want to go back to long-term development of young players.”

One man who knows exactly what this day will hold, and who continues to bear the scars of the 5-1 humiliation at Celtic Park this season, is Rangers captain Lee Wallace. The mere mention of the experience still stings.

But it is not only that one game that troubles Wallace. From the moment he committed his future to the club as they re-emerged in the fourth tier of Scottish football in 2012, he has been hell-bent on restoring them to a level where they can realistically be classed as challengers to Celtic’s dominance.

That has proved far beyond them this season, but with incoming manager Pedro Caixinha due to have a watching brief from the stands today, he is hoping he will soon be able to satisfy an itch that won’t be sated until Rangers are competitive in such spheres again.

“A phrase I use is getting us back to where we belong,” Wallace said. “I took that from Ally McCoist, and by getting back to where we belong by definition I feel is winning league titles, Champions League group stages and winning silverware.

“That will be the time I can smile and be content with the decision I made [to stay at the club]. I’m always happy with the decision I made, but that’s when I can sit back, smile and be proud of that decision and that journey. But until that point we’re still fighting to get that.”

The enormity of Celtic’s lead over Rangers in the Premiership standings is such that the specifics no longer hold relevance for Wallace. It could be 36 points come the final whistle this afternoon, but for him, one point would be too many.

“It won’t get to me any more than how I feel about the gap that already exists,” he said. “It has not been acceptable from us. We’ve been really disappointed.We did maintain at the start of the season that we wanted to be as competitive as possible and it’s not proven to be the fact.”

What is left for Rangers to salvage from the season is a chance of second place in the Premiership and an opportunity to disrupt Celtic’s serene march towards the treble. To do the latter, they will have to ask questions of a Celtic side who so far have come up with the answers to anything posed on the domestic scene.

“We’ve got a plan, we will go there and try to win the game,” Wallace said. “We understand the task. They’ve individuals that can hurt us – they’ve done that already and done it in every single game they’ve played in this season. We respect that.

“But we can’t just sit there and accept it and applaud it. We’ve got to make sure we can rise to that and we feel the confidence that we’ve built in the last two games, and going into this task being written off by everybody, we go there and we can try and enjoy that responsibility and try to win it.”