Carter Vickers Responds To Classless Sakala With The Dignity Celtic Is Known For.

As the Ibrox clown-car fills up with more of their Peepul making dire predictions and talking the worst kind of nonsense about how they are the better team – Niko Katic is the latest; do any of you even remember him? – Cameron Carter Vickers showed the class and the quality today, and the dignity in front of the media, Celtic is famous for.

This week has been a cacophony of noise from across the city, as the Ibrox club and its hangers on have made big predictions. Predictions are fine. Their fans and media cheerleaders see the record under The Mooch and reckon they are unbeatable. But what’s not on is the utter disrespect they’ve shown our club at the same time.

They are better than us? Really? The reigning champions currently sitting with a nine point lead? By what logic? And “a better club” Sakala thinks? One that crawled out of the grave of one that died in enmeshed in fraud and disgrace and which itself shamelessly appropriates the parts of that club which suit it and throws overboard those which don’t?

Carter Vickers didn’t indulge the media when they tried to get him to comment on that. He didn’t even do the old “we’ll pin it up on the dressing room wall” rot which usually accompanies these things. Everyone at Celtic is so on-point right now, so totally disciplined and focussed on what matters. He was no exception.

“For me, I’ve got no problem with it. Every professional sportsman has to have some level of self-belief to get to where they are,” Carter Vickers said, ignoring the premise of the question which was about the ‘other mob’ comment. He continued. “For me, it’s a normal comment for a professional sportsman to make.”

Which he knows isn’t quite what he was being asked about, but the message discipline at Celtic is nearly perfect at the moment, and I’ve never been so impressed by it.

It is always satisfying to beat your rivals, this we know. But this will be an especially satisfying weekend if we show up for business and get this job done. It is imperative that we keep our heads and don’t do anything rash, that we keep an eye on the officials, above all.

It is imperative that we win after the week we’ve had, a week in which the nonsense and the Ibrox trash-talk have come at us hard, every single day. The latest manifestation of it is BBC Sport Scotland’s decision to do a full interview with Beale, as if he’s the new Chosen One. We’ll see how long that lasts. We’ll see if it lasts past the weekend.