Ange Is Right: Celtic Must Be Careful Not To Suffer The Same Fate As EPL Giants.

I wrote earlier in the week, or late last week, about the FA Cup and stories that we should join it with the club from Ibrox. For the good of that competition. Lunatic stuff, and unworthy of further comment.

That tournament certainly doesn’t need us to add a touch of magic dust. There is enough of that there to go around.

The weekend was filled with shock results and Wolves were denied a goal against Liverpool that if it had counted would have registered another of them.

The FA Cup does it every year, but this year has been a vintage one, one for the books.

Last night, the League Cup games produced their own amazing outcomes. Wolves themselves are out to Forest, a team who were knocked out of the FA Cup in a 4-1 thrashing at the hands of Blackpool. Forest are joined in the semi-final by Southampton who have had a terrible season so far but recovered magnificently to knock Man City out.

Part of the problem is that some of the bigger clubs don’t take their cup competitions seriously down there. There’s also an arrogance about some of them which is difficult to credit. Top players were left out of that City team tonight; they got what they deserved against a side they thought they only had to show up to beat.

God forbid that’s us come Saturday night.

McInnes will have to play a bit differently than he did at Celtic Park and I know of at least one player in his side, He Who Shall Not Be Named, who will run through walls to get that result.

If we’re complacent, arrogant, over-confident or just lazy on the day we could pay for it, at Hampden, in front of tens of thousands of our own fans.

I know Ange has watched the results in England with disquiet.

He’s as good as said so.

He’s warned the team not to become another name on that roll of dishonour. If they close their eyes I’m sure they can picture the headlines. In Scottish football terms it would be a seismic shock, perhaps even bigger than the Lennon defeat against Ross Country when we were defending not just that trophy but had not lost one in the previous four years.

This is a vastly better team than Lennon had. So it would be a Richter Scale style earthquake. No-one would lose their job over it, but the idea of us as some sort of juggernaut built for success will be severely damaged. We can’t let it happen.

This team will know it has to show up with nothing on its mind but doing the business on the day. They must push Kilmarnock back into their own half and keep them there for the full 90 minutes, or until we’ve put the game beyond doubt.

I’m sure we will. The manager is too good at what he does to allow anything else, and these players have that hunger to win every match that only the best teams do. They take every opponent seriously; they treat every game like a cup final and a semi-final will have especial seriousness for them, especially for those who’ve not won much yet.

The most important difference between Celtic and those English teams is that we will not turn up with the feeling that we have some sort of divine right to win. Everything we have as a club is earned. Bottom line. Everything.

This will have to be too, and we know it. Which is why we’ll do it.