The Celtic Star’s Glasgow Derby Predictions – Next up is Matthew Marr…
Being asked to write a prediction for Sunday’s game gives me two notable problems. One, I immediately think of Jock Stein’s famous quote: “Only a fool would try to predict the score in an Old Firm game!” But then I remember that there is no Old Firm, and that makes me feel better.
Second, against any Rangers team, I am always very pessimistic, and worry that any positive prediction will see me being wrong. A story from earlier this season exemplifies this. In the first Ibrox game, I thought Rangers would win.
I was actually at church for the first half of the game, going into mass just after kick-off. As I was going in, I heard a roar from flats opposite and checked my phone: 1-0 to Rangers. I assumed therefore that my negative prediction would be correct.
On leaving the service, it took me a minute to work out how the 1-0 Rangers scoreline had changed to 1-0 to Celtic! And then of course it ended up being a great day, albeit one we’ve not fully exploited since then due to poor results.
The honest scenario is that Sunday is genuinely knife edge stuff. Celtic have beaten this Ibrox team twice this season, albeit without completely dominating them. On another day, both matches might have gone against us.
In recent weeks, there’s been more reason to be optimistic. Generally (Hearts aside), Celtic have looked better, and some players are back from injury at the right time. This puts us in a good place. It’s certainly more than possible that we could win by the odd goal in three.
Still, I can’t quite shake off the idea that whatever I predict will see me being completely wrong. So let’s say that it’ll be a Rangers win on Sunday … and then definitely no Celtic Champions League triumph by the end of the decade!
Matthew Marr
