The defeat to our rivals was a hard one to take, a route to a possible treble was on offer, we had beaten them in the last encounter and our rivals had just faced extra time in Europe.
The post-mortem of the game has been done by many, so I won’t repeat it. However, if anyone had told me during our shambolic state last summer that a new manager many of us had never heard of would rebuild a team from scratch, have the League Cup trophy in the cabinet and be six points ahead with the league in our own hands, I would have thought they were as mad as a Daily Record journalist saying Bobby Madden is a fine referee.
Yes, defeat to any rival, no matter how young is hard to take, but I firmly believe that we control our own destiny.
We have 15 points to play for and have a goal difference that is unlikely to be matched by our closest rivals. If we are to win this league, we must ensure we play to the strengths that have placed us in such a strong position.
In short Celtic need to keep being Celtic. We can debate what improvements the continuing rebuild can deliver once the Premiership trophy is safely deposited in Paradise along with that automatic Champions league place and the investment opportunities that it provides.
The mainstream media are questioning our bottle, our fitness and hoping for a collapse and another Helicopter Sunday. They will be greatly disappointed. We have a leader who has a plan and is sticking to it. Ange revealed this at yesterday’s Media Conference: “I’ve tried wherever I’ve been to create programmes and environments where you play your best football at the end of the year.”
I am convinced Ange will get us back on track, after all we have so many positives to focus on in these last few games.
Joe Hart is enjoying his career renaissance and he has much to prove to his critics down south. A league title and Champions League exposure will be a fitting ‘I’m not done’ gesture to those who wrote him off.
Losing Juranovic for a few weeks is not ideal, but in Ralston we have a man who has turned his career around and who would go through a brick wall or a whole row of Ross County defenders for our club. He has not let us down in the past and his ability to get the ball into the box will be needed tomorrow.
CCV and Starfelt did not play badly against theRangers, and they are the best centre back pairing in the league. Combined with Greg Taylor now playing the best football of his career we have a defensive unit that despite the odd mistake is rightly the stingiest in the league.
The way Celtic play depends on the fitness and movement of our midfield, and we now have a group of players that can press and also create with McGregor pulling the strings.
We badly missed a man who is very underrated by some last Sunday, Nir Bitton. His ability to slow down the game and allow us to play out a lead will be vital in the coming weeks. As will every player in a squad that is shaping up very nicely and will be supplemented by the energy of David Turnbull who is also now back to full fitness.
While rivals have a treatment room looking as busy as Glasgow airport security, we have both Giorgos Giakoumakis and Kyogo Furuhashi fit and available to play, and we know they will score goals. They will also hold up the ball and create space for others in a team that has shown itself to be full of goal scorers across the final third, as Abada and Maede have certainly shown.
We also have Jota and if reports today are to believed we are working hard on a permanent deal. His form has been disappointing in the last few games, but he has scored ten goals and never hides. His skill is sublime and at times he can be unplayable. I am sure we will see more tricks and goals in the final five games.
What Celtic have been doing domestically all season has worked so far, we have 82 points and won our last five league games. We should take confidence in this and the fact we have a leader who knows what must be done.
Ange also said this yesterday:
“We’re five games out, we know that four wins gets us the trophy, so we don’t have to worry about anything else and we haven’t worried about anything else. Again, the key to all that is to get three points on the weekend.
“Because if you look beyond that, you can trip over yourself. We know if we get a win on the weekend, play well and put in a strong performance against a tough opponent, that means for the last four games we know exactly what our goal is.”
That goal is the league title and if Celtic keep being Celtic then we have a great chance of achieving this.
Celtic Gossip – follow on twitter.
Morning Gossip: The boss knows what we have to do tomorrow. “We’re five games out, we know that four wins gets us the trophy so we don’t have to worry about anything else and we haven’t worried about anything else, The key to all that is to get three points ” HH pic.twitter.com/l1AVLc2dck
— Celtic Gossip (@CelticGossip) April 23, 2022
Celtic didn’t lose over 90 minutes, even though they were kicked off the park by 12 man Newco and weren’t at their best !
Referee shouldn’t referee another game !
This was a cup game, its different and a chance for players to take their mind off the league.
Semi-finals are always bad games and difficult to predict.
O.F. games are so hard to predict, anything can happen on the day.
Neither team played well , it was terrible advert for our game.
A chance for Celtic to get back to concentrating on the chase for the league and forget last weeks disappointment.
Reverse the Names Celtic and Newco and these would be the headlines or similar, that would have been pumped out by the backwater, racist, bigoted orange press all week.