Dubai, Washington and Glasgow’s Kingston Bridge

Kris Ajer is the latest of Celtic’s on-form players to be featured by Celtic TV from the clubs winter training camp in Dubai as the club attempts to pick up the pieces of the Glasgow Derby defeat from last Saturday that sees the club trail theRangers by an astonishing 19 points in the Scottish Premiership, albeit with 3 games in hand.

The Dubai trip attracted the attention of the Scottish Government who themselves have not had a very good season as far as their interventions into Scottish football have been concerned, with many supporters disappointed that they have been neither fair or reasonable in stopping Celtic playing after Bolingoli’s Covid breach yet commending theRangers when their players (at least two of them) broke the protocol rules.

Then after a weekend when Glasgow had ‘graffiti on the walls’ that would have shamed Trump’s white supremacists in Washington yesterday – racist, sectarian death threats spray painted under the Kingston Bridge – and Celtic players caught on video being racially abused as they entered Ibrox on Saturday – the Scottish First Minister and her Deputy choose to speak about some photographs they’d seen of Celtic’s R&R trip to Dubai – which is actually a high intensity training camp.

Can someone at the SNP get Nicola Sturgeon to comment on the disgraceful racist and sectarian graffiti and the racist and sectarian abuse suffered by the Celtic players as they arrived at Ibrox please? Or are these matters not worthy of comment?

Back to Celtic picking up the pieces and after both Soro and Turnbull were featured on Celtic TV, Kris Ajer was next to step up for his interview.

On the defeat at Ibrox, the Norwegian defender said: “We’re disappointed with the defeat. We are a club who are expected to win every single game and the players expect it, as well.

“We must try to perform better in the second half of the season,” Ajer added. “The three league games in hand are obviously good for us and we know we need to take nine points, but we know we need to win pretty much all the games going forward.

“We are excited for the challenge and are really looking forward to it.”

On the controversial training camp in Dubai Ajer outlined his thoughts. “It’s always a really good trip. We come out here, get some sun, great training and to get the opportunity to be together for five full days now is really beneficial for the whole squad.

“That’s always our target, we’ve done that every single year we have been here and we’re doing exactly the same thing we have done for the other years.

“We’re training hard, pushing each other and, hopefully, we come back even fitter this time.”

Celtic released this latest video from Dubai this morning.