Celtic Has Played Our Cup Final Rivals Twice This Season And Know We’ve Nothing To Fear.

After all the dust settles and the controversy recedes, after all McInnes’ foot-stamping and Jackson’s moon-howling are forgotten, after every cynic and critic and Ange hater has taken their shot over VAR and after The Mooch has gotten the first of his free-transfers from some English club’s treatment table signed and sealed and marketed as a world beater, and after Celtic has sealed the deal for a striker which will along Giakoumakis to go we will arrive, at last, at Hampden to face the Ibrox club in whatever new form it takes.

There will be some who will claim that new signings make them a different team, but the bulk of that side who played against Aberdeen will be there. The man in the dugout will be the same one. The style of play will not have radically altered.

The press loves the guy. That much is obvious. Keevins article on him, at the weekend, was vomit inducing stuff, almost on the level of that which he used to write about Van Bronckhorst before he, like the rest, turned on him and clamoured for his head.

What I saw yesterday, from both sides, was fairly naff football. But it was noticeable how easily Aberdeen found space between the Ibrox centre backs. It was noticeable how they were beaten by balls played on the deck and even, at times, by some pretty basic route one stuff. They aren’t a team to be feared. A veteran midfielder came in and dominated their own players so thoroughly some of them should have left the field in embarrassment.

There is no question in my mind that if we show up as if we mean business that we will get the business done and secure the trophy. We’ve played this side twice. There are some who will have you believe they were utterly dominant at Ibrox; I would urge them to go and look at the possession stats from that day. They show that for the lie that it is.

If we play the way we’re capable of then we’ll leave nothing standing of The Mooch’s monument to self-delusion. What frustrates me, and it’s one of the few things about this team that does, is that we’re clearly much, much better than they are. But we’ve given them cause to believe otherwise, and we’ve done it more than once.

But the two absolute beatings we’ve given them have demonstrated what we can do when we come out with the right intent and our football clicks. They have beaten us just once in the last five encounters, the Scottish Cup semi-final where I thought we switched off. At Ibrox we were miles from our best and still left with the share of the spoils.

I don’t know why anyone on their side of the city would be confident about the cup final. When we raise our game they cannot live with us, so their only hope really is to get us on a bad day. Even dire officiating didn’t make all that big a difference in the league game and I don’t expect that if we come with our guns loaded that it will make a difference here.

I’ve watched them a lot now and when you do that you can see the glaring holes and their capacity for making huge errors. We play better football. We have better players. We have a better man at the helm. I believe these things add up to our being favourites. I believe we will more than justify that tag. In short, I’ll believe we’ll do them.