Most Rangers supporters would point to the summer of 2021 as the moment the club first began to lose ground on Celtic.
But the more damaging summer may have come two years later, when Rangers had an opportunity to rebuild from a position of strength and instead dismantled too much of the squad that had delivered the 55th title and a Europa League final.
The argument over when Rangers' decline truly began is complicated. The summer of 2021 is the obvious starting point.
Steven Gerrard had just delivered Rangers' first league title in a decade, finishing the 2020/21 campaign unbeaten in the Premiership and with 102 points. Celtic were rebuilding after a disastrous season and had lost their dominance.
Rangers had momentum but the club did not strengthen sufficiently.
Instead, the squad that had won the title was largely trusted to go again, due in part to Gerrard insisting no starters be sold.
In hindsight, that decision looks costly.
Yet there is an important counterargument: Rangers still took Celtic to the wire in 2021/22 and reached the Europa League final.
Giovanni van Bronckhorst's side finished the league campaign with 89 points, four behind Celtic, but Rangers enjoyed an extraordinary European run.
They eliminated Borussia Dortmund, Red Star Belgrade, Braga and RB Leipzig before reaching the Europa League final against Frankfurt in Seville.
While the failure to strengthen in 2021 can reasonably be viewed as the beginning of the decline, it was not yet an irreversible one.
The summer of 2023 was different. Rangers had another opportunity to rebuild
Rangers finished 2022/23 with 92 points, second to Ange Postecoglou's Celtic, who collected an unassailable 99.
That season had included two different managers, with Van Bronckhorst dismissed during the 2022 World Cup mid-season break before Michael Beale, Gerrard’s former assistant, took over.
Despite the managerial instability, Rangers were still capable of pushing Celtic extremely close domestically.
They had also reached a European final only a year earlier. This was the moment for a carefully planned rebuild. Instead, the club effectively dismantled too much of the squad.
Alfredo Morelos and Ryan Kent left on free transfers despite bids of seven figures just years prior. Allan McGregor retired, Scott Arfield departed, Antonio Colak was sold for a pittance despite Morelos also leaving.
Ianis Hagi was sent out on loan despite a return to fitness, while Glen Kamara was allowed to leave for a fee below the value Rangers could arguably have achieved earlier in his career.
There was a case for moving on from some of those players. The problem was succession planning.
Rangers did not simply refresh the squad. They removed significant experience and quality without replacing it at the same level.
The wrong players were retained
At the same time, Rangers continued to rely on players whose best years were increasingly behind them. Connor Goldson remained a key figure despite mistakes creeping into his game, Borna Barisic remained the first choice left-back, despite his trust from the crowd ending during a 3-0 defeat to Celtic in early 2022.
Ryan Jack remained an important midfield option, despite mounting fitness issues.
The problem was not that those players had suddenly become poor footballers.
It was that Rangers were trying to build the next generation of the team while continuing to depend heavily on an ageing core from the previous cycle.
That created a strange situation where the club was simultaneously breaking up the successful squad and failing to move on from it.
Ridvan Yilmaz was signed as the long-term solution at left-back but never consistently displaced a declining Barisic.
Leon Balogun was brought back after Helander's departure rather than Rangers making a decisive investment in a new defensive leader.
Around £6 million was spent on Danilo, but he never consistently looked like the transformative attacking signing Rangers needed. Cyriel Dessers was a good option but never looked like a dependable Rangers number nine like Morelos had.
The tactical plan collapsed
Beale's recruitment was also tied to a very specific tactical idea. Rangers were initially set up to play a narrow 4-3-1-2, with no traditional wingers.
That plan lasted barely one competitive match when Rangers lost away to Kilmarnock on the opening day of the 2023/24 season and the system was quickly abandoned.
The club then had to scramble for wide options late in the transfer window, meaning the recruitment strategy and tactical requirements were suddenly moving in different directions.
It was symbolic of the wider summer. There was no clear, coherent transition from one Rangers team to the next.
Rangers still had enough quality to finish relatively strongly under Philippe Clement after Beale's October dismissal.
But the trajectory was clear.
2022/23: 92 points.
Celtic: 99.
2023/24: 85 points.
Celtic: 93.
2024/25: 75 points.
Celtic: 92.
2025/26: 72 points.
Celtic: 82 (Hearts on 80.)
Rangers have therefore gone from 92 points to 72 in three seasons, and a Celtic decline has not been capitalised on, as it would have under Gerrard and this is ultimately what makes the summer of 2023 so significant.
Celtic's rebuild following Postecoglou's departure was not perfect but not a sharp decline. Rangers' successive rebuilds have been disastrous and misshapen.
Since Beale's 2023 window, Rangers have repeatedly changed managers, recruitment strategies and large sections of their squad.
Millions have been spent trying to fix previous mistakes, players have arrived and departed. Yet every new rebuild has effectively been another attempt to correct the previous one.
Celtic, meanwhile, have continued accumulating trophies and points and have overtaken Rangers as Scotland’s most successful club for the first time in living memory.
Europe tells the same story
The European trajectory is perhaps even more damning. Rangers reached the Europa League final in 2022.
Four years later, they could not even reach the Europa League third qualifying round. Their elimination by Jagiellonia Bialystok means Rangers will instead compete in the Conference League playoff round qualifier.
That does not mean everything went wrong in the summer of 2023. Nor does it absolve the failures of the years that followed but it demonstrates how far the club has travelled backwards.
So when did the decline really begin?
There are two legitimate answers.
Summer 2021 was when Rangers failed to capitalise on winning the title, they had finally broken Celtic's dominance and should have strengthened aggressively.
Instead, Gerrard largely trusted the existing squad. However, that squad still took Celtic to the wire the following season and produced one of the greatest European runs in modern Rangers history.
Summer 2023 was when the decline became structural.
Rangers had 92 points.
They had recently reached a European final, they had a squad containing proven winners and they had the opportunity to refresh intelligently.
Instead, too many important players left without adequate replacements, too many ageing players remained, recruitment was built around a tactical system that quickly collapsed and the club entered another cycle of reactive rebuilding.
92 points became 85, then 75, then 72.
And a club that had reached the Europa League final in 2022 was four years later unable to reach its play-off round.
The summer of 2021 may have been the first warning but the summer of 2023 was when Rangers failed to heed it and allowed Celtic to turn a competitive advantage into a years-long gap.
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