Celtic Will Take Any Team At Home In The Cup Draw … And That’s What Ibrox Fears Most.

As we wait for the cup draw, due to take place in less than an hour, the simple fact is that we’re the best footballing team in this country and we will go wherever the “random” balls send us. That does include Ibrox, where I reckon this team is just itching to roll up and blow their team away.

But at Celtic Park we are something else. At Celtic Park we have been brilliant, and that is why no club – and especially not the one across town – will want a draw that sends them there.

We have always been a strong team on home turf, but at the moment, a few shakes aside, it is the most perilous place to visit in the nation, and I suspect that when we’re on our game it would prove one of the toughest places to visit in Europe.

I badly want the Ibrox club in the draw, in front of our own fans, on one of those days that turns the stadium into an arena of noise, where the atmosphere pulses, where the fear courses through the opposition even as they are warming up in the tunnel.

Home advantage has always been big for us, but I think it has a special significance at the moment when the crowd is behind the team and the team is playing that brand of football which we’re all so enjoying watching.

When the two combine the place becomes the worst nightmare for opposing footballers; look at Barisic, caught in the headlights scared at Parkhead a fortnight ago, and being turned inside out by Juranovic and Abada.

So any home draw and we’ll be well pleased. But in truth, I’ll take whatever we get with the same optimism. Because this team is well capable of going to the Bigot Dome and getting a result just as readily as we would at Parkhead.

And after that, a place at Hampden, where teams can’t sit back and defend, where it’s the winner takes all, where they can’t put eleven behind the ball and play for the point … and that’s why our record there is so damned good these last few years.