BRENDAN’S HAMPDEN MESSAGE: “The history is not weighing on us. We just have to do our job. We set our targets and goals and one of them is to win the league. The Scottish Cup is another.
“We wanted to not just defend the trophy, but to win it again.
“That doesn’t cloud our thinking, though. We still come in and enjoy our work. I tend not to think about the other stuff too much. If you do, and got wrapped up in the whole history or the expectation, then you put yourself in a pressure trap. You don’t need that. There’s enough pressure in football.
“I am here to win, but I am here to get the team playing well enough to win and, hopefully, that will continue in all of the games until the end of the season.”
ON A SUPPOSED CHALLENGE EMERGING FROM IBROX: “It doesn’t make any difference to me. I came up here and the standard I wanted to make was for Celtic. Rangers, as a competitor in the league, of course, it pushes you, but no more so than what Hibs or Hearts will do.
“You look at these teams, and Aberdeen, clubs with great histories. I think the league is very competitive, but, at Celtic, we try to set our own standard and that’s to be the best that we can be.”
KRIS COMMONS ON THE NEXT RANGERS MANAGER: “The next manager, whether it’s going to be Graeme Murty or someone else, needs to have ambitions to win the league.
“I think it’s very ambitious. I heard James Tavernier say he wants to win a treble, as well.
“There’s a lot of noise coming from Rangers of what they want to do. Put quite simply, they need to invest in the squad to give them the best opportunity for that. That’s going to take tens of millions in my opinion.
“They’ve got a lot of loanee players returning to their old clubs. And then they’re back to where they were about 12 months ago. At the moment, they’re a little closer to Celtic, but in the grand scheme of things they’re still way, way behind winning a title.”
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