Former Celt Peter Grant was on BBC Sportsound’s League Cup Final look-back last night, and the podcast is well worth a listen. Peter Grant who admitted he knows how it feels for the opposition to be trailing in the wake of a rival after his time at Celtic as player, also made a very interesting statement regarding Celtic’s training ground offering a more competitive environment than a matchday in the Scottish Premiership for the Celtic fist team squad.
“Celtic’s training pitch is more competitive than most of the games that they play. That’s not being disrespectful to anyone else – that’s fact,” Grant stated. “If you look at that 22-25 man squad, on that training pitch it must be really competitive if you’re going to play with the standards they are setting each other.
“That’s the way it should be. If you’re a top side then your hardest games are during the week, like at Celtic. If they are training properly and doing their business properly, you can see that in the way that they play. That tells you about the training ground ethic and the enjoyment for these boys is matchday – the hard work gets done every other day.”
It’s not something I’d considered before, however as a player, coach and manager, Grant will know all about the levels behind the scenes at Celtic and other Scottish clubs, as such it’s interesting to hear he feels Celtic’s players may well be challenged far more by each other than they may be against most top flight clubs.
That perhaps goes some way to explaining why players who appear to be on the periphery of the Celtic first team regularly hit the ground running and impact on games whenever they get the chance.
In recent weeks David Turnbull has impressed with a goalscoring return to the team after time spent predominately on the bench, and why Sead Hakšabanović, as we brought to you earlier on The Celtic Star, came off the bench on Sunday and was desperately unlucky not to top off his impressive sojourn with the goal he arguably deserved.
Ange Postecoglou has often pointed to the intensity required from the working week to ensure everyone is ready if needed to be called on for first team football, particularly so when Celtic are required to play two games a week. Yet perhaps, as Grant alludes to, the days leading up to matchday are even more intense than the Premiership fixtures the Celtic players face on any given Saturday.
That is perhaps something of a problem if you are another Scottish Premiership side and it perhaps doesn’t reflect particularly well on the standard of Scotland’s top flight as a whole, but it certainly reflects well on Ange Postecoglou and his coaching staff and the preparation his players receive during training sessions at Lennoxtown.
Now, I wonder if Peter Grant was including our cup final opponents in his stinging assessment of Scottish football standards. From Sunday’s evidence he may well have been.
Niall J
