Tynecastle has sometimes been a tough place to visit, and the home side will be determined not to make it easy for us tonight.
They will push us hard.
They will get in our faces. But they simply do not have the quality to cope with us if we turn up meaning business and that is exactly how we should approach the opportunity tonight throws up.
This is a pressure game, but only because it will allow us to ramp that pressure up on a certain other club.
Win tonight, move into a five-point lead and Sevco’s match on Friday night, on the other side of Edinburgh, becomes a do-or-die fixture. If they drop anything we motor into the next day’s games with a chance to open up a decent sized gap against Aberdeen.
The planets may be about to line in spectacular fashion in the run-up to Sevco’s visit to Celtic Park at the end of the month.
If we have a lead bigger than five points – whether or not allowing Sevco a game in hand – a win at Parkhead really puts us in pole position at the winter break, after we’ve negotiated what’s arguably our toughest run of games.
Pressure is hard enough for Sevco to bear when they are trying to stay neck and neck with us.
But you really see it affect them when they are behind and don’t want to fall further behind. I think if we get a breathing-room style gap their “title challenge” will collapse like a house of cards as morale takes a nosedive and the hype stops buoying them up.
The only thing better than winning tonight will be winning comfortably, winning in style, and that’s what I think we will do. We’re the top club against the bottom club, and we should be looking to highlight the gap and what it means.
We should be looking to do damage. Perhaps not as much as a cricket score, but enough that it will hurt. I don’t know what kind of manager they’ve hired over there, but he started with a defeat and we should be looking to ratchet up the pain.
The squad is in good shape with most of the big players back.
We should see this game as a perfect opportunity to send another message about this team; some think we’ve looked shaky in the past few weeks. What a perfect team to be coming up against, at a time like this, at a ground where we have sometimes struggled.
Not tonight, Bhoys. Tonight belongs to Celtic.
Remember, you can still do our Slapping Sevco quiz at the link below … just answer the first question about who scored our first goal against the NewCo …