CELTIC STAR James Forrest was doing the honours at the opening of Celtic’s latest store at the Braehead Shopping Centre, a few miles away from Ibrox. That in itself is another indicator of the commercial advantage that Celtic enjoys over Braehead’s local team who are still unable to commit to a proper retail operation – so vital for Celtic – while they remain at loggerheads with Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley.
Celtic have none of those worries although a new store opening seems to be a reversal of the policy to push ahead with driving everything online.
None of that mattered much to James Forrest who has been at Celtic long enough to see a great deal of changes to the footballing environment in the city.
Forrest was more interested in talking about Thursday’s Europa League Group stages match in Austria against Red Bull Salzburg and he started by looking back to the last time the sides met.
“We played them four years ago in Europe, but I think they’ve changed about half of their team from back then,” the Celtic winger said.
“We will start looking into them more over the next couple of days. Any game in Europe is tough and this is definitely going to be a tough game. Red Bull have won their first nine league games as well, so they will be confident.”
“The defenders and the goalkeeper have been defending well but we have also been defending as a team.
“I think we have seen in the last two games that, if we can keep a clean sheet, then we will always have the players going forward to create chances and it’s then just about taking them.”
“The manager has said we want to be in Europe after Christmas, especially after the disappointment of going out of the Champions League.
“We are in a very hard group in the Europa League, but we’ve already beaten Rosenborg. Everyone is looking forward to this campaign and the ultimate aim is to still be in Europe come the New Year.”
Forrest also welcomed the change in fortunes at the weekend enjoyed by team-mate Scotty Sinclair, who had been going through a dip in form and confidence but scored a marvellous winner against Aberdeen then celebrated in style.
“You can be positive and do something special and Scott’s goal at the weekend was really good. But even a lucky goal or a deflection is equally welcome and it can do the trick for you as well. It’s all about being positive and confident and that’s what we want Scott to be,” Forrest told the Scotsman.
“I was absolutely delighted for him – you could see that the full team was. We know what he can do and it’s important to have him back and scoring. You could tell from the celebration on Saturday that everyone was buzzing for him. He was emotional afterwards but everyone is right behind him. I think he’s old enough to have gone through this already in football. There are ups and downs along the way and it’s how you bounce back from that so coming on at the weekend and scoring will do him the world of good.”
