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Celtic Will Win At Ibrox Tomorrow And This Is Why

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Tomorrow is the one we’ve waited for.

This is the game which will probably decide whether this season has been a mere disaster or an all-out catastrophe, but in some ways that makes it a better occasion. We’ve lost the league and the League Cup … we badly need to finish with a trophy, and whether Gough and others want to believe it or not, it does set a marker for the next campaign.

Tomorrow will determine whether or not our players maintain a shred of their reputations as the greatest winners in Scottish football’s recent history, or if they will go down meekly, without a fight.

People have been asking all week how I think this will go, and I’ve been telling them all the same thing; I think we’ll win.

When they ask me why I tell them that there are a lot of factors, a lot of reasons, and that even one of them might be enough to get us above the level we need to find.

Taken together, I can’t see past us, and that’s me being honest.

I’m going to tell you now why I think tomorrow will be our day.

No Nerves At Celtic Whatsoever … 

The draw was supposed to be a disaster for us.

It was supposed to send fear coursing through all at Celtic Park.

Instead, we turned out two decent performances and the whole mood of the team seems to have been raised a notch.

More importantly, we have appeared nerveless.

Kennedy’s comments have done exactly what they were supposed to do; they have sparked debate, yes, but they’ve given people the impression that nobody at Celtic is in the least bit intimidated by this fixture.

For too long we’ve looked weak this season.

Kennedy’s remarks were our first demonstration of strength and confidence in a while, and they were perfectly timed. Far from being petrified of the prospect of going there, we seem positively keen for it.

None of them expected that at Ibrox and neither did the hacks.

You had idiots like Keevins who said immediately that this was a bye tie for the Ibrox club, as if we could be utterly disregarded. Kennedy and the players will have laughed at that.

Our team approaches this without fear … and that is a bigger advantage that most realise. Imagine you were in a fight with someone who kept on coming for you no matter how many times you put them down.

How long until you wondered what you were dealing with?

Fear works in strange ways.

The very absence of it in others can spark it in you.

They will have felt confident at Ibrox, and expected us to be rattled.

Yesterday Kennedy radiated calm.

Who sounded rattled to you?

These Players Owe Us Big Time

The players know they have let themselves down, and let the club down and let the fans down in the course of this campaign.

They had set such high standards, and they have only matched them on a handful of occasions … and never, yet, on the truly big one.

That needs to change, and these guys are good enough that if they get their game to the right level that we can make it happen tomorrow.

Frankly, they owe it to us, and to the management team, and to the directors and to the fans … they owe it to Celtic itself. For too much of this campaign they have gone through the motions.

They have failed to give their all, and tomorrow that has to change.

I think these guys realise they owe us and I think that many of them – like Brown and McGregor – will be absolutely determined to deliver, and with their skills they can turn the game.

Kennedy Has The Team Looking Better

One of the things that makes me very confident is that Kennedy has obviously gotten this team playing better.

They are obviously sharper and fitter and better drilled … and the football we’ve played a few times has been exceptional. We look if not quite at our best again then certainly like a team which is playing with more verve and style and competence.

The issues with set-piece defending will be critical.

Have he and the coaches worked on those?

I hope so, and we’ll find out, but in an attacking sense you can see that a difference has been made with the way the team runs and moves.

Little techniques have been honed.

Players are anticipating each other better.

Most critically, the goals have started to flow with nine in the last two games … and that suggests that we’re also converting our chances now and that was the difference in the last two matches we played against the Ibrox club, and will prove to be decisive this time around.

There Is Pride At Stake For A Lot Of These Guys

Oh this is the big one alright, and don’t underestimate its importance, and the club at Ibrox will do so at its own extreme peril.

Some of these Celtic players have been Invincibles.

Some are double treble winners.

Some are treble treble winners and others are quadruple treble winners.

This is a proud group of footballers and they should be because that kind of success is without precedent.

Pride does come into this.

These players have seen two trophies surrendered and nothing can be done about those, but the Scottish Cup is something that we’re going to need to have pried from our hands and these players do not want to give that up meekly.

They want to prove that they are still winners.

They do not want this proud era to end in such total and utter failure.

They don’t want to be remembered for this.

Which is why I expect that every single one of them will go above and beyond here and give us everything they have.

For themselves, as much as anything else.

Because these guys know they have sold themselves short and that those who stay want to lay a foundation and those who want to go want to go out in triumph, instead of on the back of such a shameful campaign.

Every One Of These Players Is Playing For His Future

Every player who walks onto the pitch in a Celtic strip tomorrow is playing for his future, whether that’s at Celtic Park or elsewhere.

Sutton had this one correct; if some of these guys want to realise the big moves they see as coming this summer they need to do a lot better than they have up until now, and going out with “loser” or worse, as “quitters” is not the way to do it.

The likes of Edouard need to show that they are big game footballers still, that they have the hunger for that, that they not only recognise the importance of these occasions but that they can raise their own performances to the level of them.

Frankly, if I were a watching scout and these guys turned in a meek performance tomorrow I’d take back on the most scathing reports, laced with words like “gutless” and “clueless” and “heart lazy” and whatever other adjectives I felt were befitting.

On top of that, those guys who want to stay will be under the same scrutiny.

Imagine that Howe has all but agreed to come; this is the match he’ll be watching, because what better one for finding out who in the team can be relied on and who can’t?

Those with an iota of instinct towards betterment and self-advancement will give us everything they have.

Not to would be damaging to their own careers, and they know it.

We Have Bossed The Last Two Of These Games

Let’s face it, we should have beaten this lot the last twice. The first result is unbelievable; to win the match by a single goal without a single shot on target?

That’s the luck of the devil.

In the second game we weren’t troubled that much more and individual errors at both ends of the pitch cost us a victory.

We have outplayed them both times.

We deserved more than we got out of those games, and we proved that we don’t have anything to fear from them. We need to be a little sharper at the back and in front of goal, but recent performances have suggested that we’ve sorted one out of two on that front, and that gives me added confidence about the game.

We proved in those games that when we show up we are more than a match for them … tomorrow we’re going to demonstrate that we’re better than them.

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