The other night, for reasons which I don’t fully understand myself, I tuned in, for a brief spell, to Clyde. I wished I hadn’t bothered almost immediately. Keevins was droning on about why the Ibrox club were favourites to win the league next season.
There are three things he’s basing this on, and two of them are utterly stupid and the other is a gigantic unknown. The unknown is what business we might do in the transfer market between now and the time the window shuts.
The other two are these; the manager’s lack of experience and last season’s form.
The manager’s lack of experience in Europe concerns me. But he is far better credentialed for this job than Neil Lennon was either time we hired him, and he is far better credentialed than the golden boy across the city. This appears to have escaped Keevins’ notice.
The form from last season is the biggest red herring of them all though.
Anyone basing Celtic’s likely form in this campaign on what was done last year isn’t playing cards with a full deck. Our club was in freefall last year from the moment the manager threw his players under the bus in the aftermath of the Ferencvaros game.
We self-detonated.
We won 22 games out of 38. That’s scandalous form. That’s Aberdeen level form. Nobody with a shred of sense realistically thinks we’ll come close to having a season like that two years in a row, where we drop points in sixteen matches.
We drew eleven of those games. Postecoglou could do better than that with the squad we currently have, even if we brought in no further signings.
I did a piece on this a month or so ago, and looking at the makeup of our squad, you would expect a highly scoring second placed finish even without additional manpower.
Our good players didn’t just become bad players overnight. The likes of McGregor, Forrest, Turnbull and Rogic alone are enough to secure us points more weeks than not, and with the right tactics and team shape we will win more than 22 matches.
The squad does need freshening up, of course, but I have no doubt that more signings are on the way. We need them but even without them I think we could put together enough of a title challenge to shock those who expect us to simply roll over.
Keevins, who has a record for making ludicrous predictions, seems to think it’s not presently worth our time turning up for next season. Even by his standards this is idiocy on a grand scale. This is the earliest he’s ever called a league title.
If his past record is anything to go by it is Celtic who’ll have it wrapped up by Christmas.