After Wednesday night’s full fixture list in the Scottish Premiership attention turns this weekend to the Premier Sports Cup semi-finals at Hampden Park…
First up is Celtic v Aberdeen as the top two in the title race face up at the national stadium just two weeks after they shared the points in a thrilling encounter at Celtic Park which ended in a 2-2 draw. That ended both sides 100% record in the league with Aberdeen boss Jimmy Thelin being the happier of the two managers after his side fought back from a 2-0 deficit at the interval then withstood a late Celtic barrage to earn their point. You would have got great odds at Allbets.tv on Aberdeen getting anything in that second half after Celtic were two up and dominating the match in the first 45 minutes.
In contrast Brendan Rodgers was left frustrating, telling his players that they got careless and reminding them of the need to maintain their concentration and their style of play regardless of the score in a match. Attention had maybe switched to Bergamo where Celtic were off to play Europa League holders Atalanta in the Champions League in the next match.
That disappointment of throwing away a 2-0 advantage against Aberdeen possibly helped Celtic in Italy and the free-scoring Italian side were shut out quite brilliantly by a resolute Celtic performance.
The last time Celtic and Aberdeen met at the national stadium was last April in the Scottish Cup semi-final, which turned out to be one of the games of the season in Scottish football. Joe Bloggs City describes this very well on The Celtic Wiki:
“One of the craziest semi-finals you’ll ever see in any cup competition, and one of the best Scottish football matches anywhere this season. One of the best Scottish Cup matches ever also.
“A crazily exciting match with Aberdeen taking a lead from the start with Celtic fighting back only for Aberdeen to then fight back (with goals at the death of the 90mins and then 120 mins) to take the game to penalties. Celtic made hard work of it and could have scored more but Aberdeen proved they are a better side than their league standing at present (8th). They are a club again in transition but played possibly their best game this season today.
“Matches like this are not good for the heart that’s for sure. Can say only from looking back with hindsight, but that was exciting and a great advert for the game in Scotland. Goals, extra time, last minute goals, controversies, no dirty play, penalties, changing fortunes for both sides, great goals and so on.”
Celtic’s penalty shoot-out victory set up the first ever Glasgow Derby Scottish Cup Final against theRangers and an Adam Idah goal in the 90th minute was enough to win the Scottish cup to add to the Scottish Premiership trophy that the Hoops lifted the week before.
And that could happen again if Celtic can get past Aberdeen on Saturday 2nd November, late afternoon (kick-off is 5.30pm) and theRangers can get the better of Motherwell the next day in the 3pm kick-off – these really are two mouthwatering semi-final matches in the Premier Sports Cup.
Celtic supporters won’t really worry too much about who will be in the final as long as Celtic are there. Brendan Rodgers takes his team to Hampden looking to protect his own 100% winning record at the national stadium in two spells as Celtic manager. A remarkable record that he will want to continue.
