Chris Sutton has set out his hopes and pinpointed the main danger to Celtic for his old club’s upcoming home fixtures against theRangers and Real Madrid.
Celtic have had a great start to the season with five wins from five games, however, Ange Postecoglou’s squad now enters an intense schedule with two games a week from now up until the beginning of the World Cup in November, starting with the trip to the Highlands to play Ross County in the League Cup tomorrow evening.
That unusually leisurely one game a week start to the season was as a result of Celtic winning the cinch Premiership in Postecoglou’s first season in charge and in doing so gaining automatic qualification for the Champions League group stages. So for once the Hoops did not have to worry about stressful qualification matches.
With the three upcoming games in the next seven days however, Chris Sutton gave his hopes that the squad will be ready for the matches, as they may be a step up from some of the ‘gentle’ matches we have already played. He also goes on to identify, in his opinion, the greatest threat posed to Celtic in their upcoming match this Saturday against our main title rivals, where a victory for the Hoops would open up a five point lead at the top of the league looking down on theRangers.
Speaking to BBC’s ‘The Monday Night Club’ Sutton looked ahead to the Glasgow Derby this weekend. “In terms of the game on Saturday, it is so difficult to call because (the)Rangers have players who can hurt Celtic. I don’t think Ryan Kent – I think he’s an outstanding player, he is such a handful, but if you look at his numbers, goals, and assists, they are not there.
“Every time I watch him and when Celtic play them, he is the one I fear most from Celtic’s point of view.”
On his old club, Sutton said: “Celtic have started the season absolutely flying, they have had some pretty gentle fixtures, they haven’t had the stress of Champions League qualifiers, which has helped in many respects. I just hope, and this might sound a bit strange, I just hope they are ready, now, for the challenges ahead and the three games-a-week. (the)Rangers on Saturday, Real Madrid on Tuesday night.
“They are big games, listen, it’s not impossible Celtic rock up on Tuesday night and beat Real Madrid, they are that sort of team, they can give anybody a bloody nose.”
“When was the last time a team won the league before Celtic and Rangers?” 🤔🏆
🗣 @MicahRichards and @chris_sutton73 discuss which league is more of a two horse race #ScottishPrem or #PL? 🐎
Listen to The Monday Night Club on @BBCSounds ⤵️#bbcfootball
— BBC 5 Live Sport (@5liveSport) August 29, 2022
The Celtic Legend summary of his thoughts certainly includes a hint of optimism as the Champions League challenge against the current European Champions approaches. Let’s hope he is right and that Celtic can pull off an historic win against the Spanish giants, just like the last time they came to Paradise. But before that the attention of the players is entirely on the match against Ross County tomorrow night as Sead Hakšabanović yesterday told The Celtic Star, see below…
