Huge opportunity for Celtic to open up a gap

Before yesterday’s early kick off between Hibs and theRangers, many Scottish football pundits were already predicting after just three league games that this season’s Cinch Premiership would come down to the head to head matches between Celtic and our city rivals. Many thought both teams were looking incredibly strong this season and the other Premiership teams would struggle to take any points from either side. When I first read these comments I thought, well, they are half right.

Having watched both Celtic and theRangers matches this season I could definitely agree that Celtic look like a well oiled machine this season that could steamroller all in front of them, and I believe we have even more gears to go through. As for our Glasgow rivals? I think they have looked dull and predictable and look like they are more than capable of dropping points to other teams in the league. Yesterday was just the start.

Celtic have started this campaign looking much improved from the team that won the league with room to spare last season. So far we have managed to retain all our most important players from the last campaign and I don’t see that changing before the end of the transfer window. There are rumours circulating around the likes of Josip Juranovic but personally I just don’t see him going. He has a chance this year to prove himself on the two grandest stages of them all, the World Cup and the Champions League, I don’t see him uprooting his life once again with such an important year ahead.

We have started the season looking revitalised. For the first time in a long time we haven’t had to navigate the treacherous European qualifiers and have been able to concentrate on a relaxed pre-season which saw us peak just in time for this season’s league campaign. We are basically injury free with a squad that has two players capable of covering every position on the park. We look incredibly strong on that front with rumours of two more joining before the transfer window closes. The players all look fresh and ready for what lies ahead.

I was speaking to one of my Celtic daft friends after last weekends emphatic win over Kilmarnock about the team spirit that is on display within this current squad and we both agreed it looked better than at any other time we can remember. The players seem to have an incredible bond and their celebrations together after goals and at the end of matches shows this clearly. The joy that everyone showed when Carl Starfelt got his first Celtic goal was something that left me with a huge smile on my face. All these things combined leads me to believe that we will be extremely hard to stop domestically this season. I will be writing an article in the next day or two about my thoughts regarding our European adventures this season also.

As I mentioned earlier, many pundits have been mentioning how both halves of the Glasgow divide look like they won’t drop many points this season, yet from what I have saw from theRangers so far tells a different story. Watching our matches to theirs is like night and day. We look so fresh and capable of scoring for fun, destroying anyone who gets in our way yet theRangers look like a team at the tail end of a heavy campaign not the start. Their style of football is dull and I genuinely don’t think after yesterday you will find many of their fans who disagree.

In recent seasons they have done well in Europe and I will not even attempt to deny that. Their style of play suits the European game in a way that better teams seem to find it difficult to break them down. They play in a sort of counter attacking way they frustrates the opposition and have done well to beat better teams by sticking to them tactics. I will go into this more in my next article when I talk about my own thoughts regarding Celtic this season as we take on the Champions League’s best.

Although theRangers style of play has certainly delivered for them in Europe, at home they look decisively average and if they don’t get an early goal they seem to struggle to break teams down. Against teams who sit in and make it hard for them to break down they can look clueless at times. Sometimes when I see them in these situations they remind me of Celtic two seasons ago when our rivals finally won their first ever league title. Gio Van Bronkhorst seems similar to Neil Lennon in the way that if Plan A isn’t working then he struggles to come up with a Plan B. They are not an exciting team to watch. If they fail to score early it all becomes very laboured and pedestrian and they fail to spark into life until an inevitable Penalty decision gives them an inroad into the game.

Today is a huge game for Celtic. Hearts are quite clearly the best of the rest in the Premiership and will provide the toughest challenge to us so far this season. Three points today will be huge and give us an early two point gap. We play theRangers in a couple of weeks and all being well we will have the chance to go 5 points ahead by the start of September. This is all conjecture of course but at the same time entirely possible. Having watched both teams this season I genuinely think if we can take such an early lead they will struggle to hang onto our coattails.

Let’s start by beating Hearts at Parkhead today.

Hail Hail

Conall McGinty

About Author

Hailing from Cushendall in the North of Ireland my formative years were spent watching Celtic during our barren spell through the 90's which meant I have appreciated our recent trophy-laden spell even more. Favourite matches home and away I've attended has to be beating Man Utd 1-0 at Celtic Park and being with my 2 brothers watching us beat Lazio 2-1 in Rome. Best away day experience? Has to be Munich with friends from Coatbridge...what a few days!

1 Comment

  1. Yep,you seem to be one of the “ it’s all over” brigade ….after a few games against awful opposition. “ better teams struggle to break them down” what does that even mean ? We mustn’t be one of the better teams if that’s the case…going by what you previously said.