Scott Brown – Hunger, Desire, Momentum

Scott Brown might be entering the twilight of his playing career but all his trademark hunger and desire to win was in full sight yesterday at a rain-soaked national stadium as Celtic swept aside Aberdeen to win the Scottish Cup semi-final and set up yet another final appearance for the Hoops.

Since losing a penalty shoot-out to theRangers in the Scottish Cup semi-final in April 2016 Celtic have gone on to win each and every domestic cup game that they have played in over the past four and a half years.

Lest we forget that as was pointed out on Twitter last night is a longer period than the Great War.

Celtic marked the latest cup-tie win with this tweet that sums up the remarkable achievement over the past five seasons…

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35 consecutive domestic cup wins for the Bhoys! 🤩

— Celtic Football Club (@CelticFC) November 1, 2020

“I thought we were excellent in the first half,” said the Celtic captain told the official Celtic website.

“We moved the ball really well and looked more like what we are used to doing. We managed to score two great goals and we could have scored a couple more in the first half against a good Aberdeen team who were very organised.

“In the second half, Aberdeen were throwing people forward but the main thing was we defended really well as a team from back to front and managed to keep a clean sheet.
“It’s not just the defence, it’s the whole team. It starts at the front, there’s always a way we can stop it at its source. It’s not just about who puts it in the net, it’s about how we defend as a team from the front all the way to the back.”

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Broony and the rest of the players will now prepare for the next two tough challenges in this rather remarkable run of challenging fixtures. It’s Sparta Prague up next under the disco lights (are they still flashing?) at Paradise on Thursday night before making the short journey for perhaps the more important match at Fir Park on Sunday in the Scottish Premiership. That Motherwell game really does fall into the ‘must win’ category.

“It was a great performance against Aberdeen and we have to build on it and make sure we keep playing his way and keep this momentum going,” Broony said. “For us, it’s about making sure we get those improvements and keep building on them weekly.

“We have to look forward now, we have a huge game coming up during the week. It’s about kicking on now. We’ll look to take this into Thursday and try and build on that from Thursday to Sunday.”