It’s a massive day in the SWPL1 title today with the outcome of two games looking likely to have a major impact in the destination of the title at the end of the season.
Fran Alonso’s Celtic side are currently sitting in second spot in the league and today are in Edinburgh to take on fourth placed Hearts at the Oriam Performance Centre (kick-off is 3pm). Hearts are unbeaten at home this season and recently fought out a goalless draw there with the current Champions, the (big-spending) Rangers who are currently in third spot in the league, two points behind Celtic but with a game in hand. Today theRangers are at home to league leaders Glasgow City and this game kicks off at 4.10pm.
A victory for Celtic in Edinburgh will allow Celtic to keep an eye on the events at the other match knowing that points have to be dropped by one rival or perhaps preferably both!
The Celtic Star asked Fran Alonso about this scenario at his Media Conference ahead of today’s match against Hearts but the Celtic manager’s focus, as you would expect, is exclusively focused on his own side’s challenge against a vastly improved Hearts side who are clearly the best of the rest in the SWPL1 in what is turning out to be a fascinating season.
“Our whole focus is on the Hearts game,” Fran Alonso insisted. “We don’t care what happens in the other game as we focus on ourselves.”
The Celtic manager is under no illusions about the scale of the task facing his side against a tough opponent this afternoon on a pitch where no visiting side has won this campaign. “Hearts are the strongest team away from the top three and I would say that they’ve got certain aspects that are on a level or even better than the top three, so very difficult opponent who are unbeaten at home so for us it could be a high challenge to try to get the three points,” the Celtic manager said.
There is though reasons to be confident for the small group of Celtic supporters travelling to Edinburgh to support the team and the Celtic manager emphasises this by pointing to the goalscoring form in three of the four matches in 2023 where his side scored 23 goals. The freakish and potentially costly goalless draw against Motherwell was the exception to this although Alonso is firm in his belief that that was a one-off.
“You saw the performance on Sunday and the previous Sunday as well, so the Ghirls are performing very well and I cam confident that we are going to be at our best,” a positive Alonso said as he eyed the three points on offer this afternoon.
“If we don’t reach that level then I can tell you that we are not going to win the game because they are a very tough opponent. Hopefully the Ghirls will show the top performance they’ve shown for many weeks and hopefully we can get the three points.”
