EXCLUSIVE: SCOTT BROWN and STEVEN WHITTAKER on their derby rivalry, ignoring each other during Old Firm week, and working wonders at Ayr United

Firm friends since playing together in the Hibs youth team more than 20 years ago, Scott Brown and Steven Whittaker remain almost inseparable.

The Ayr United management team start most days together on the 90-minute drive from Edinburgh to Somerset Park and are constantly side by side at training sessions and on matchdays. And they don’t seem to get sick of the sight of each other. They had last Thursday off and, yes, you’ve guessed it, spent the whole day together.

There’s only ever been one reason for the pair of them to cut off communication and that was Old Firm time during their playing days.

Both left Hibs in the summer of 2007. Whittaker made the £2million move to Rangers. Celtic spent £4.4m on signing Brown.

Best friends Scott Brown and Steven Whittaker clash on Old Firm duty back in 2009

Despite the obvious rivalry, they stayed in close contact. But not when Scottish football’s dynamic duo went head to head. .

Brown explains: ‘We never really spoke to each other the whole week building up to the game. I let him deal with his stuff and I dealt with my stuff. And then after the match we’d often be going away with the Scotland squad and we’d jump in the car together.’

Whittaker chips in: ‘I think we were showing respect for what was obviously such a big game. We both just wanted to win it so badly. Then we’d get back to normal and speak again the night after or the day after.’

For five years they were on opposite sides of the great Glasgow divide. Did they ever clash in a Celtic-Rangers game?

Whittaker laughs at the question. ‘That would have been difficult. He didn’t really leave the middle of the pitch and I stayed on the sides.’

Brown joins in. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave the middle, it was just that I couldn’t!’

Now here’s a revelation. Which of them leads the red-card count in Old Firm matches? Cool and calm Whittaker or fierce and fiery Brown?

The former Celtic captain can’t wait to answer that one. ‘I generally managed to live on the edge in these games. I was only sent off once. He was worse than me — and everyone thought I was a bad boy.’

Whittaker owns up. ‘Okay, yeah, it was me. I was sent off twice (in Old Firm games), both at Celtic Park. One was in the last minute, it was literally the last tackle of the match.’

The next debate, sitting around the table in the Ayr boardroom, centres on which of the pair of them was more successful during those years of rivalry. Not just when they went head to head but in more general terms.

Whittaker says: ‘Under Walter (Smith) we obviously did alright. You won the league the first year you were at Celtic, we won both cups and that was the year we went to the UEFA Cup final.

‘Then it flipped a bit and we won three leagues in a row with Walter. You won the league the following year and then you lot went on a run after that.’

‘I can’t actually remember,” admits Celtic legend Brown, ‘how many (Old Firm games) we won and how many we lost. I’d be lying if I tried to tell you. I probably preferred going away from home and winning because it meant so much. You’d that section (of away fans) behind the goals at the time, I think it was 5,000, and it was a brilliant atmosphere. It made it a proper rivalry compared to what it is now.

Ayr United have made a bright start to the season under their young managerial team

Steven Whittaker and Scott Brown together in their Hibernian days

‘It’s poor. You’ve got 60,000 at Celtic and 50-odd thousand at Ibrox or Hampden and it’s just weird not having away fans. You want the away fans to be there, score a goal, run to them and have a wee bit of excitement. But it is what it is.’

Whittaker’s in agreement. ‘I think for the benefit of the fans and the players, like Scott says, if you score at the home of your biggest rivals, you want to be able to celebrate with the fans and they want to celebrate with you as well. Those are special memories. It’s a bit sad it’s not like that now.’

And it’s not just celebrating with the Celtic fans that Brown misses. He loved being the panto villain for the Rangers supporters too.

‘I probably buzzed off that,’ he says. ‘I enjoyed that whole hatred thing. We tried to do our talking on the park. And if we won, or when we won, we celebrated together and then disappeared pretty quickly down the tunnel.

‘It was the biggest build-up and you knew it was going to be on telly and millions of people were watching it all over the world. You wanted to win because it was the biggest game of your season.’

Brown’s old team are big favourites going into today’s first showdown of the season against Rangers but Whittaker reckons it would be dangerous to dismiss the game as a foregone conclusion.

‘I don’t think form is a thing going into an Old Firm game. It doesn’t really matter who’s up and who’s down. Rangers still have good players and hopefully they can try to bridge that gap, especially over the course of the season, that’s the biggest thing. You can beat Celtic in a one-off game but you must be consistent through other matches.’

Brown jumps in. ‘That’s the difference. Celtic’s level of consistency and strength of squad is ahead of Rangers. There’s not been a big turnaround in Celtic’s players. They’ve lost Matt O’Riley and one or two fringe players but, really, if you look at their first team for the last two or three years, since Ange (Postecoglou) has been there, and Brendan (Rodgers) took over, the core of the lads has been much the same.

‘It’s not like “that didn’t work, so let’s go and refresh”. That doesn’t really happen at the club. They keep the quality and add a little bit each year.

‘O’Riley’s obviously going to be missed. I think he’s fantastic, He’s technically a very gifted footballer and you can see why he’s gone down the road (to Brighton) for a big fee.

‘Celtic have done unbelievable business with the profit they’ve made on him. Then you have to deal with the situation and make some signings and that’s exactly what they’ve done.’

‘It’s definitely a boost for Rangers, though,’ says Whittaker. ‘I think when a team lose their most productive player it will hurt them. They’ll bring in a quality replacement. But will he be at the same level?

‘Hopefully not from a Rangers point of view. One player doesn’t make a team. They’ll be well drilled on how they want to play, so Rangers, as a collective, have to be ready for that and hopefully they can make their game plan work.’

A year ago questions were being asked about the return of Brendan Rodgers to Celtic, unaccompanied by significant signings. Now, despite the sale of O’Riley, they look to have strengthened their squad considerably.

‘It was never in doubt,’ according to Brown. ‘Brendan’s a fantastic manager. What he’s done doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because he’s a very, very good man-manager and he’s spot-on with tactics.

‘He’s got good coaches around him who understand the way he works and players who were there in his first spell at the club like Cal (McGregor) and Jamesy (Forrest) who are on that same wavelength.’

That’s a phrase that works well too for Brown and Whittaker. Very much on the same wavelength and with one of football’s closest and longest-lasting friendships.

Brown smiles: ‘He has the patience of a saint. Actually, you know what it is? He’s half deaf in one ear and every time I talk to him I think I talk to the wrong ear!

‘I’m a lot more chilled away from the pitch than I was when I was on it as a player. Some people probably meet me and think I’m an a***hole but I’m actually quite chilled and I’ll talk to anybody as long as they’re nice to me.’

Brown is not surprised Rodgers (right) has been a success at Celtic second time around

‘We both coach, we both pick the team, we do everything together. We have an hour and a half travelling in the morning and we just talk about what we’re going to do for training.

‘In the office and on the training ground, he might have an opinion, I might have an opinion but we’ll come together and do what’s best for the club.

Whittaker’s turn. ‘I just think, we’ve spent a lot of time together, right from the start of our careers, the kids grew up together, the families get on well.

‘We’ve got a lot in common.

Character-wise I’m a bit quieter, maybe a bit calmer but we tend to bounce off each other.

‘If a training session isn’t going well, I’m capable of shouting if I need to shout and Scott’s capable of being calm if he needs to be. We react well to each other because we know each other so well.’