“We’re not eyeballing Hearts and worrying about them,” Luke McCowan

Yet Bloom’s investment means that unlike Aberdeen last season, Hearts have the depth and financial strength to reinforce in January if they remain in contention, meanwhile even if Celtic were to enter the transfer market, the support have little real confidence in a coherent strategy emerging although Brendan Rodgers told The Celtic Star that things could be better in terms of conducting transfer business come January.

‘On looking forward has there been anything discussed so far about changes that are going to be made for the January transfer window so that we can avoid similar dramas of the summer window?’ The Celtic Star asked the Celtic manager at his media conference last Friday at Lennoxtown.

Brendan Rodgers replied:  “I really hope so. At this moment in time, for me, the scouting team know exactly what we’re after and what we missed out on in the summer market. So again, a lot of work going on into that. It’s a smaller window, of course, so you have to be slick, you have to be prepared and ready and look to get the business done as early as we possibly can. So I’d be hopeful that we could learn from that and hopefully close that out better in the January window.”

Hearts also benefit from a lighter schedule. With no European football and already out of the League Cup, their focus can remain entirely on the league. Celtic, by contrast, must navigate the Thursday-Sunday grind until at least February. It is a potential advantage for the challengers, though still a long way from decisive.

The real test of Hearts’ mettle may come when Celtic visit Tynecastle at the end of next month. A victory for the Champions in that fixture could puncture the momentum currently building in Gorgie, just as Celtic’s demolition of Aberdeen in last year’s League Cup semi-final ended any faint notion of a challenge from Pittodrie. Hearts will be desperate to avoid such a fate, but Celtic will know they are capable of delivering it.

McCowan’s words though do cut to the heart of the matter, no pun intended. Celtic’s battle lies within. The defence is already title-winning in quality, but the attack must rediscover its cutting edge and the team must start winning decisive matches, something that’s hardly been a feature of our 2025 story to date.

Hearts deserve credit for their flying start, but there are still 32 games to play. If Celtic find consistency and rhythm, they will remain the team to beat. If not, Hearts may yet turn early-season excitement into something more lasting.

For now, the noise around Tynecastle is impossible to ignore, but as Luke McCowan reminded everyone, “It’s about us.”

Niall J

Continues on the next page…Celtic must shake off lacklustre form to end 2025 with a bang…

Callum McGregor looked back with some satisfaction on the Celtic performance in Belgrade last week but there’s also a nagging thought in the skipper’s mind that the team came away with two points short of what the team’s performance merited against Red Star Belgrade on the Europa League opener…

“Maybe we should have won in Belgrade, but it finished in a draw,” McGregor said, looking back on the 1-1 draw ahead of Thursday night’s match at Celtic Park against Portuguese outfit Sporting Braga. “When you’re in the stadium, with the atmosphere and everything else — in the first game — you don’t quite know what to expect.

“We’ve dropped down from the Champions League to here, and everyone expects us to win. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s easy,’ but it’s not — you have to earn the right. And they’ve got some good players too. I think, on the whole, we probably just edged it. On another night, we could’ve won it.

“It shows the level of our team — to go there, create enough chances to win the game, and not give up too many at the other end. I thought it was a good start and a good point earned in Belgrade,” Calmac concluded as reported by Newsquest outlet TCW.

With that valuable away point already on the board, Celtic now turn their attention to the first of the four home games and it’s at Celtic Park where the team needs to maximise their points haul if they are to make meaningful progress in the group stages of European football’s second tier tournament.

“Hopefully, we just fly through the group. That’s the thing — we have to prove we’re a good side. It’s easy to say, ‘Yeah, they should do well,’ but we have to actually make sure we do it.

“That’s important. We have to earn the right — the same way we did in the Champions League last year. We can’t take any game for granted. We’re there, we’re hungry to win, and we have to perform at a good level to get points.

“Hopefully, after the eight games, we’ll have enough points to get through — and from there, the competition could really come alive.”

2025 so far has hardly been a vintage year for Celtic, yes the title was one after a sizeable lead was built in the first half of the campaign but meaningful victories have been few and far between when you look back the football that’s been played.

The biggest disappointments of course were the Scottish Cup Final defeat to a poor Aberdeen side and the Champions League elimination in the play-offs to Kairat, this being the most costly and one of the most embarrassing results in Celtic’s history.

As we mentioned last week the Europa League campaign – in the group stages at least – is all about atonement for Celtic. Callum McGregor is correct in his assessment on the match in Belgrade but we could add the Scottish Cup final and many others, including the game against Hibs at the weekend, to the list of games we should have won in 2025 but didn’t.

This needs to change and ideally that needs to happen in the match against Sporting Braga on Thursday night where we need both a good performance and a victory.

Continues on the next page…Celtic v Sporting Braga – An early Europa League kickoff but not our earliest…