“I can’t deny we are on the final straight. We have nine league games to go, and it’s been a long season with lots of games, but certainly when you go into these months it’s very exciting.
“The finish line is in the distance, but there’s a lot of work still to do,” Brendan Rodgers said yesterday as he considered the league table after Celtic’s dramatic, thrilling 3-2 win at Ibrox on Beautiful Sunday.
And he gave encouragement to Scott Bain, who came in last Sunday to make his debut and performed impressively in a hostile environment. That impressed the manager who, as we reported yesterday, is planning to make Bain’s time at Celtic go beyond the summer when his loan period ends.
The former Alloa building site worker is set to earn a good contract to play for the Scottish champions and he is likely to start that off by retaining his place in the side at Fir Park tomorrow.
“Scott was absolutely outstanding last week to come into a game of that magnitude,” Brendan said.
“If you can play in that game as a Celtic player away at Ibrox, with that atmosphere against your biggest rivals, then you know you can play in any game of football for Celtic
“It’s great because Scott came in and it’s difficult to come in as back-up keeper.
“But the likes of our goalie coach Stevie Woods, who has known Scott longer than I have, always said that he’s a player who could play for us.
“Sometimes someone’s misfortune means good fortune for you, and that was the way it worked out for Scott last weekend when Dorus de Vries had to pull out.
“I wanted to see Bain in action at some point in the season, and I needed to put him in if we were going to look at anything beyond this season.
“It happened naturally that he got in for the Rangers game, and I thought his performance and his temperament in that game showed me everything to say he can play for Celtic.
“Bain has come in and been absolutely brilliant around the players and how he has worked.
“We brought him in for a purpose because he can play in the style in which we want, and we have seen that in training.
“Now he has shown it on one of the biggest occasions you can as a Celtic player, and it was also his first game for a long time.
“It’s pretty clear Bain has the temperament and qualities to play as a keeper for us.
“We will sit down with him and see how much he is going to enjoy it, and look at his game time between now and the end of the season.”
Blowing the whistle, former referee on Willie Collum’s Ibrox performance
