Celtic’s impressive 3-0 win away at St Mirren on 2nd January meant that Brendan Rodgers’ side went into the winter break with an eight points lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership, although it has to be acknowledged that challengers theRangers do have two games in hand.
Two games after the re-start and Celtic have taken four points from six, winning 1-0 against Ross County at Celtic Park last weekend before drawing 1-1 at Aberdeen in Saturday. Meanwhile theRangers have played three games, using up one of their games in hand and have collected maximum points to narrow Celtic’s lead to just three points with a game in hand.
So it’s clear that there is a close and sure to be dramatic title race on for the Scottish Premiership title this season – so we thought we’d take a look at how things might pan out and list five pointers that indicate that Celtic will be Champions again.
Brendan Rodgers, already a hugely successful manager of Celtic via his first stint in charge between 2016-19, quickly picked up where Postecoglou left off in terms of leading the Scottish Premiership and delivering what looks like being knock-out blows to theRangers with Michael Beale already paying the price of failing to get the better of Celtic. His replacement, the Belgian, Philip Clement and on 30 December got his first taste of Glasgow Derby despair with that man Kyogo once again netting the winner for Celtic.
Kyogo actually scored seven times against theRangers in 2023 and that is actually a club record for any Celtic player in the club’s unbroken history against any Rangers club playing out of Ibrox.
But what are the key factors that are going to come into play in the Scottish Premiership title race between from the end of January to the season’s finale in May? Here are five key factors that Betmaster Online Casino reckon could have a significant bearing on the outcome of the title race this season.
1. January Transfer Window – theRangers have already secured Fabio Silva on a short term loan from Wolves. Silva is a player with bags of unfilled potential and is clearly surplus to requirements at Molineux but Clement will be hoping that the Portuguese forward will have more luck finding the back of the net north of the border. Clement is well aware of the financial limitations that come with the job at Ibrox but Brendan Rodgers has no such worries with Celtic having around £70m cash at hand sitting in the bank and there were plenty of positive noises from the Celtic board at the club’s AGM at the end of last year pointing to investment in the playing staff in the January window.
However, despite their best efforts Celtic weren’t successful in their pursuit of the manager’s targets that could have given Rodgers real momentum in the remaining months of the season. Celtic did sign two players – Nicolas Kuhn from Rapid Vienna and Adam Idah, on a short term loan from Norwich City. Both players influenced the game at Pittodrie – with Kuhn scoring the equaliser for Celtic – and both look likely to make their first starts at Easter Road on Wednesday night.
2. Fixture Overload – Clement knows that he has a more hectic fixture schedule after the winter break with those games in hand having to be negotiated. The Belgian must also prepare his side for their Europa League round of sixteen matches and aim to get through that to reach the quarter finals. If that happens then theRangers will have an extra six games to play compared to Celtic and that could ultimately prove to be extremely costly for the Ibrox outfit.
3. Glasgow Derby Domination – You have to go back to April 2022 for the last time theRangers managed to win a meaningful Glasgow Derby match. They did achieve a fine 3-0 victory over Celtic in May 2023 but by that time Celtic were already confirmed as Champions and the only trophy on offer for winning a dead rubber was the Summer Bragging Rights Cup, which was hastily conceived by Sky Sports. However so far it’s been a false dawn as Brendan Rodgers has picked up where he left off by having the winning hand on Derby Day this season. If that run continues it’s hard to see anything other than another Celtic title win.
4. Course and Distance winners – In December theRangers won the League Cup for the first time in their history. That completed the set of Scottish domestic honours having won their one Scottish Cup in 2022 and their only Scottish Premiership title in 2021, which of course was the season when there were no supporters at games due to Covid. Other than that it’s been Celtic scooping up the Lions share of domestic honours in Scotland including a world record of four consecutive trebles. And if Celtic do win the league this season they’ll make it 12 title triumphs in 13 seasons. Celtic have a squad packed with winners, players who know exactly what it takes to win the league when the heat is on. In contrast theRangers squad has no experience of playing and winning under that pressure when the supporters are in the grounds.
5. The role of the supporters – The Celtic supporter can play a significant role in driving the team onto yet another Scottish Premiership title triumph. Brendan Rodgers spoke about this ahead of Saturday’s Glasgow Derby and the 60,000 Celtic supporters certainly played their part in the 2-1 victory over theRangers. Meanwhile there’s been a complete meltdown surrounding a controversial incident where theRangers felt that there should have been a penalty despite a clear offside shown by VAR. All hell has broken loose in Glasgow as a result and is indicative of the pressure getting to theRangers fans and indeed their manager and Board.
