Celtic Has Done Well To Boost Hatate’s Chances For Ibrox. But Should We Risk It?

The absolute best news this week so far came yesterday, when Reo Hatate came through a 45 minute bounce game at Lennoxtown. His chances of making it to Ibrox fit enough to play more than just a token part in the match have been dramatically improved.

He’s going to be ready for that game, but how ready he is will depend on what we do about the game against Livingston, where we’re facing more than just one difficult choice about who to select and who we might have to leave on the bench.

For many fans there will be an understandable hope that we wrap our best players in cotton wool to prevent any further problems. But of course, that comes with one enormous risk. We want to go to Ibrox top of the league, and that door is now open. If we can’t go to Almondvale and win then the Ibrox game is going to be pretty irrelevant anyway.

He has to play at some point in that one, and so does Carter Vickers.

If we had Callum available for even part of that match that too would be pretty amazing. They don’t have to play the full game, just enough of it that we can go to Ibrox with something approaching our best squad, with all of the players sharp and close to match fit.

In a season where we’ve had nothing but bad luck, are we not due some of the good kind? Just seeing Hatate back in the Hoops is a lift. Knowing that we’ll see him in the team soon, and that he will be available for the run-in after the split even if he’s not fit for the game coming up is pretty great. We have missed his ability to weave magic.

The best Celtic performances against the Ibrox club in recent years have come with our midfield troika of McGregor, O’Riley and Hatate.

It makes me laugh to recall that two years ago, when we signed the latter two in the January window, that some of the Ibrox fans openly mocked the idea that we might go into a game with that partnership, with some of them labelling it the “weakest” Celtic midfield of their lifetimes. What a shock they got.

They won’t be so shocked this time, except if all three are in the starting line-up. Yes, we’d be taking a chance, but we’re really in “no risk no reward” territory now and the only question the manager will have to answer for himself is whether a half-fit McGregor and a three quarters fit Hatate are really better options than the alternatives.

I would suggest that nobody would be trying to get these guys ready for the game if he thought otherwise. This is, in some ways, an indictment of the signings.

In another way it’s just an acknowledgement that we still have the three best central midfielders in this country, and that if we can get them on the park for that one we should.