Celtic Face A Confident Side On Opening Day As Martindale Throws In The Towel.

The game at the weekend is one we’ve all been looking forward to, and I’m pretty glad that Aberdeen are going into it on a bit of a high, scoring plenty of goals and with confidence soaring. That’s exactly how we want our opponents to be.

I hate coming up against teams which offer nothing and are content to do damage limitation. Not only is it boring, but you know that those clubs will play the exact same way at Ibrox, and I want clubs to have a right go at them this year.

Aberdeen should come to Celtic Park full of confidence and wanting to win. We need that, we need challenged by more than just one club. As I said in my piece about Hibs, it does us no good to come up against teams who consider themselves beat before a ball is even kicked, a case in point being Martindale and his attitude towards our rivals.

Did you read him today? Christ sake, he sounds like he’s already chucked it, as if he’s decided that there’s no chance and that they should just be content to get through the game. He considers opening day a write off.

He even sounds like he’s looking forward to watching them more than his own team. They fought hard against us last year. They were pathetically weak whenever they turned up against our rivals, and he was virtually drooling after every game.

Nobody at Aberdeen is rolling into town on Sunday with the same idea.

I am sure they won’t be. Even at St Mirren, Goodwin knew how to have a go at teams and whilst I don’t think he’s the appointment Aberdeen fans were looking for in order to move decisively forward, he’s better than a lot of the alternatives.