The Latest Fantasy To Grip Celtic’s Enemies Is An Old One And A Daft One.

When Kyogo got taken off at the weekend, there was rejoicing in La La Land. I am not joking.

Actual rejoicing. Check their websites. They were over the moon.

They look at this guy, who has 19 league goals, and conclude that without him in the final next week that we’re doomed.

What muppets they are, what a fundamental misunderstanding of this team.

Those 19 goals have been amazing.

But we’ve scored no fewer than 78 of them in that competition, so that suggests strongly to me that we can cope. The League Cup Final is not the be all and end all of our season.

It’s another game, and if Ange and the player decide he’s not quite fit – and I don’t want him to play otherwise – then we’ll simply replace him.

The new boy, Oh, has been bought for this.

What else do these people reckon we paid all that money for?

Ange trusts him to replace the big Greek, who was the league’s top scorer in the last campaign. One idiot on The Record “jury” basically said that this is what we get for taking the risk of selling Giakoumakis, as if this boy can’t play at all.

But Ange has said we’d have signed him last season.

He’d have been here long before now had the boss been able to get that deal done then. The boy has something, and that quality may even be something that takes the Ibrox side by surprise.

It has happened before. They wish they didn’t remember it, but if you press them then I’m entirely confident that they do. When Leigh Griffiths got injured shortly before our first match against the Ibrox club in Rodgers’ first campaign he already had plenty of goals against their team over the years and we threw a guy into that game who had never gone up against them before, and he proved himself an exceptional footballer in that match.

His name was Moussa Dembele. That match is still seared into their souls. His hat-trick capped one of the most complete performances I’ve ever seen in any fixture against any club from that ground, maybe even better than Larsson in the 6-2 game or Lubo in the two matches where he utterly destroyed them, once at Parkhead and once at Ibrox.

As with then, they didn’t think we stood a chance without our first choice striker. That second choice one proved pretty bloody effective and before long he was The Man and not Leigh Griffiths. Which he remained until the day he left Celtic.

So they are entitled to celebrate the injury to Kyogo and bang on the tables with their fists and think that they’ve won a watch if he turns out not to play. All I’d say to them is this; be careful – be very careful – what you wish for.

By the end of the game they might well be thinking, “Oh Christ. That boy can play.”