REMARKABLY BBC Sport had a former Celtic player on today. Anyone who tuned in yesterday would have heard Kris Boyd, Kenny Miller on and for balance they had Chic Young who complained that he’d not been allowed into Ibrox for two years. So hearing Tom Boyd getting a chance to put forward some non-Rangers comment was as unusual as it was refreshing.
And Tom Boyd when he is given a chance seldom misses them. On the Rangers decision to cut our allocation to put an end to the massive green an white parties in the Free Broomloan, Boyd reckons he knows why the decision was taken.
“They just don’t want to see us celebrating when we go to Ibrox. We’ve had a right few parties when we’ve gone to Ibrox and I think maybe they’ve seen enough of it.
“It doesn’t matter. If it’s 800 or 7,000, I just still want to see the Celtic fans celebrating when they go there. That’s their decision, and they’re within their rights, like Hibs were and Hearts were cutting allocations as well.
“It’ll not affect the performance of the players. They know when they go to these type of places they’ve got to perform and they have been doing that, so they’ll just get on with it.”
And in contrast to the massive hype on Steven Gerrard getting the manager’s job at Ibrox Boyd sounded less than convinced that the gamble will pay off.
“It’s a massive gamble for Rangers bringing in somebody that has not had any reputation. I can see the impact they are trying to go for in terms of bringing him in.
“Celtic lost to Rangers a couple of years ago in the Scottish semi-final and they went out and got Brendan Rodgers, but Brendan had a reputation of bringing teams through. He very nearly won the league but for a slip, an ironic slip from Gerrard, all those years ago.
“At this moment in time, you look where Celtic are, what they’ve got at their disposal, you would find it hard for some of these teams to really muster a challenge.
“On what we’ve seen so far, it looks unlikely, but you never know who can strengthen. You would imagine Brendan will bring in players to strengthen his squad and develop them.
“It’s been incredible how Brendan has been able to transform some of the players – James Forrest, Callum McGregor and even Scott Brown, who is playing the best football of his career I would say.
“If Brendan is still about and still has the motivation in terms of making sure there’s no complacency then Celtic can go ahead and win another couple of championships, because they seem to have the quality and they have the money to go out and get better players.”
