“We do our talking on the park. I look at our squad and try not to worry about everyone else’s.
“It’s about who is in this dressing room and how we turn up. We will be pushed very hard again, but we have the players and a manager who has belief in us. There’s still a lot more to come from us,” Scott Brown said at yesterday’s Media Conference ahead of tomorrow’s opening match of the new Premiership season – Celtic’s 9 in a Row campaign is about to begin so strap yourselves in folks.
There’s been the usual summer noise from the squad at Ibrox over the summer and since they completed their journey from the old Third Division to make it into the top league, every summer has been full of bluster and back page headlines from the likes of Barton and Alves -this time it is from some guy called Sheyi Ojo (no, me neither) who apparently is a loanee who has yet to do anything in the game but reckons he’s walked into the best team in Scotland.
This story usually has an unhappy ending for the lastest Ibrox loud-mouth and Scott Brown, who along with James Forrest, has 8 consecutive league wins to his name, has seen it all before and knows the script and the way the story ends.
Brown could be forgiven for thinking that this is his Groundhog Day moment, every summer he has to face the same questions regarding boastful claims from Ibrox and there was a moment when he nearly packed it all in to go and try something completely different in Australia.
At his media conference the Celtic captain spoke about this and admitted that he’s very glad that he opted to remain at Celtic – despite Groundhog moments like yesterday.
“We’ll find out in a year if I made the right choice, but I believe I was right to go with my heart.
“You look at the pros and cons with these things at the time. The pros at Celtic are winning trophies and being part of this team. I’ve been lucky to be at a fantastic club for so long.
“In Australia, it was a chance to go in at the start of a new club, build it up and go as far as you could. At the end of the day I went with my heart more than anything. I’ve got so many friends at Celtic and it’s part of my everyday life,” Broony said at the Media Conference, as reported by Scottish Sun.
“If I went somewhere else I could be sitting in six months and thinking, ‘What have I done?’. Yeah, Australia sounds lovely. The weather’s nice, there’s a golf course next door.
“Actually, what was I thinking? Ask me again in December if I’ve made the right decision! But honestly, with everything going on here, winning eight in a row, going for nine, the place is buzzing.
“It’s a special place to play football. You look at all the changes around the ground since I first came here. It’s incredible what the club’s done in the area, with the Billy McNeill and Jimmy Johnstone statues there.
“It all means so much to the fans to come up the Celtic Way and see the legends on the flags. Will there be a Scott Brown statue one day? I don’t know about that. Can you imagine what it would look like?”
Going back to the latest Ibrox no-mark to make bold claims about their brilliance, the Celtic captain reckons that Neil Lennon has adopted the correct approach to all of this and will not get caught up in the 9 in a Row hysteria.
“I think the gaffer is spot-on with that. The more people mention it and the more it gets into the back of your head, people get a bit worried about creating history.
“For us, we’ve done it for the last three years and that’s because we haven’t thought about winning the league ten months down the line. You just block it out.
“We’ve got a job to do to try and get into the Champions League first. We also need to make sure we win the league games as well, so we’ve got a lot going on just now.
“We don’t sit and worry too much about winning the league in ten months’ time. You can’t worry about things like that right now. We just need to focus on winning as many games as possible and getting into the Champions League.
“It is a long season. Some people maybe forget about that. You don’t want to peak too early.”
And Scott Brown knows that the players in the Celtic dressing room have that vital experience necessary to get over the line in a league race, something that is missing across the city, although they have brought in a few former Rangers (1872-2012) players who did win some trophies.
“There is pressure on everyone. When you go to a big club, there’s a reason why you sign for them. It’s because you can deal with the pressure.
“There’s always pressure, no matter who we play, what competition it is — cup competitions, league games. It’s that pressure we all thrive off.
“People expect us to win and we need to go out there and show them that we are the best in the Scottish Premiership. We have done that over the last eight seasons and we need to try and do that again this season.
“We’ve dealt with the pressure for eight years now and we’ve done it really well. Don’t get me wrong, there have been ups and downs along the way. But we’ve made sure we’ve wrapped the league up at times with a few games to go. It’s been great.
“If it goes right down to the last game and you still win it, it doesn’t matter about how many points you’ve won it by.
“People only remember the name on the trophy.”
Watch Scott Brown’s Media Conference on Celtic’s You Tube Channel below…
Also on The Celtic Star this morning….
That Bhoy Burke, Lille back for Jozo after £72m Pepe Windfall, Filip Benkovic…see HERE.
