Celtic Aims To Stay Sharp Whilst Ibrox’s Players Infuriate Their Fans On Holiday.

This morning, Celtic played the first of their two games in Australia. The AngeBall Tour is already well underway, and although the climate will be nice and the mood and the atmosphere around the camp will be good, there is no doubt that this is a working holiday.

Sydney would have dissuaded anyone with doubts about that, based on their performance. The Celtic team was made to chase them for every ball. That’s how it should be for this team. The work never really stops. It is the secret of our success.

I was gobsmacked the other day to learn that the Ibrox players have been given a fortnight off. Do they deserve one? What’s the benefit in that? Is that really what their fans want to see? The let-downs being rewarded with a wee mid-season break?

When our players flew out to Dubai for the notorious Covid trip, a lot of the anger that bubbled away in our support was about whether or not the club was rewarding failure by flying those guys to a sunny part of the world whist the fans were stuck in their houses.

There were moral issues with that; of course there were. But in the main, I think a lot of people were pissed off that the players were swanning around a swanky hotel after delivering nothing whatsoever on the park for us. It stuck in the craw as much as the COVID restrictions, and how they didn’t seem to apply to the players.

Ibrox’s players have disgraced their club and embarrassed their fans. Their European form was stunningly bad. No wonder the idea that they should take a two week break, as if they were sweating buckets on the pitch every week, pisses off their fans.

The Celtic players are entitled to a holiday, but they aren’t taking one, at least not yet. Instead they are going head-to-head in tough friendlies and continuing to train in preparation for coming back after the World Cup even sharper than before.

This is the epitome of the “we never stop” mantra.

Contrast this with perhaps the most ill-judged photograph to be posted online since our rivals head of commercial put one up of himself at Ibrox for their Champions League annihilation by Liverpool … in the away end. I refer, of course, to the gruesome image of Morelos in shorts living it up on a South American beach whilst the club comes apart at the seams.

To say that this has angered the fans is an understatement. And even as the players holiday it up, the manager himself is over in Holland getting some downtime, and in the meantime people are telling the press that he’s going to be given more time at the club.

The whole place over there is on holiday, and the contrast with Celtic is obvious off the pitch as well because the January window work is already being put in. I cannot believe the difference in the approach by the two clubs. You would expect the club nine points clear to be complacent, and incapable of focus. Amazingly, that’s them.