It’s going to be the match of the season so far in the Scottish Premiership on Sunday as Hearts host Celtic with the Tynecastle side, now managed by Derek McInnes, looking for the three points that would open up an eight points gap over the Champions.
And it would also open up the possibility that Hearts could become the first side outside of the three Glasgow giants (Celtic and the two versions of Rangers) to win the league in Scotland since Alex’s Ferguson’s Aberdeen side back in 1985. That would be as thrilling as an online roulette win for the Hearts supporters who still hold grudges against Celtic for pipping them at the most to the 1986 title thanks to Albert Kidd scoring a late double against the Edinburgh side to deny them a first title since the early 1960s.
Celtic at the moment are not in great shape and the thoroughly deserved win for Dundee over Brendan Rodgers’ side on Sunday afternoon at Dens Park has set alarm bells ringing throughout the Celtic support. Questions have started to be asked about the manager’s tenure and whether he’ll even make it to the end of the season, given the dreadful form his side are in.
His remarks about this Celtic squad being more akin to a Honda Civic rather than a Ferrari is perhaps the first time Rodgers has ever disrespected his own players during his two spells as Celtic manager. Is that a sign of patience wearing thin or perhaps pressure getting to the Celtic boss who is likely to leave the club in the summer at the end of his three year contract?
The Irishman has also indicated that a change in formation is needed after Steven Pressley’s tactical plan to stifle Celtic worked a treat. Celtic basically played into Dundee’s hands to give the Dens Park side their first home win over Celtic since 1988, despite having less than 20% possession in the game.
Post-match Rodgers was asked if this is as tough and as worrying spell as he ever known as Celtic manager. His response, as reported by The Celtic Star, told its own story.
“Listen, it’s not all linear and all smooth right the way through the season, that’s for sure. I think the challenge from the summer now leading into here, we lost a lot of firepower, a lot of goals out of the team.
“There’s no way you’ll go into a race and be given the keys to a Honda Civic, and as you take off, it’s said, ‘We want you to drive it like a Ferrari’. It’s not going to happen. So until something changes, I have to find the solutions because, like I said, goals, speed, everything has come out of the team, and we need to find a way to be better.”
He’s referring to the forward players who have been sold by the Celtic Board this year – Kyogo, in January, Nicolas Kuhn in July and Adam Idah in September for £34m with no replacement coming in due to repeated failures in the Celtic Boardroom to sign replacements.
Rodgers exasperation comes from his squad having been asset-stripped in 2025 and having gone from giving Bayern Munich a fright in the Champions League to disasters against Kairat Almaty (a team most Celtic fans had ever heard of before this summer), Sporting Braga and now Dundee.
The blame of course lies principally in the Boardroom and the Celtic support has mobilised, through the recently formed Celtic Fas Collective, to demand change there but Rodgers now has to accept that, even factoring in the holes in his squad, he still should have more than enough to see off teams like those mentioned above.
Come the January window should Celtic be trailing Hearts and recruitment being clearly needed, perhaps the signing targets might look at the situation, with the manager set to leave in the summer and Champions League football being a much bigger ‘IF’ than in recent seasons, and decide that they have better options elsewhere.
What a mess Celtic has found themselves in and it’s certainly one of their own making. The rot starts at the top and seeps down…
