No, Martin O’Neill is not approaching tomorrow preparing for penalties.

You have to laugh at the media. I spoke earlier about how they are attempting to use the pressure angle with our new players, but they are also trying to twist the words of Martin O’Neill.

And in spite of what they claim he said yesterday, on no account did Martin say the team was prioritising practising penalty kicks.

But that is what some of the headlines are selling.

Prioritising penalties.

What he actually said was that before cup games they always take a few penalties at the end of each day’s training. He explicitly said it cannot replicate the stadium or the crowd, but that it makes sense for players to have taken a few in case they are required.

He also said managers cannot realistically plan a match around which five players will still be on the pitch if it reaches a shootout. That does not sound remotely like what some people want it to mean.

The last time we were at Ibrox, we played well within ourselves because we had to. Let’s be honest, what other choice was there?

We had a depleted squad. We had a threadbare defence stuck together with cocktail sticks and glue. We couldn’t go too far out on a limb. We couldn’t play offensive football because we knew they would try to hit us whenever they could.

In the end, we contained them, and we did it so effectively that they barely had a sniff on goal all day. Both sides had the ball in the net. Both goals were chopped off. But the fact that we were able to put the ball in the net at all, even while playing with almost every man behind the ball for huge stretches of the game, speaks to a plan that worked.

We didn’t go into that game for penalty kicks.

We went in with a very disciplined defensive shape, and we hoped we would be able to exploit them on the break. As it turned out, if Maeda’s goal counts, we go through without needing the shootout at all.

Tomorrow, we will be as close to a full-strength team as we are likely to get.

We don’t need to play defensive football. We don’t need to rely solely on hitting on the break. We can take the offensive tomorrow. We can go for it.

And as Martin himself pointed out, if your strategy is to play for penalties, then it requires a major rethink of everything you do because some of the players you want on at the start of the game are also the ones you would want on the pitch for a shootout, and that won’t necessarily happen.

By the time we get through extra time, I don’t know if Duran is still on the pitch. I don’t know if Høgh is still there. I don’t know if Baur is there. I don’t know if Hassan is there.

You cannot base your entire strategy around that.

But once again the media is putting words in the manager’s mouth. It is trying to make him sound as though he is saying something he is not actually saying, just as the police visit to Celtic’s training ground was framed in some quarters as if Celtic were the problem being warned about.

As I said yesterday, the real meaning of that visit was that Celtic had been warned about the environment they are walking into. The media was never going to frame it that way.

Whatever happens tomorrow, if the game reaches extra time and then penalties, it will not be because we played for penalties.

We didn’t play for penalties the last time.

It just turned out that way.

And with the firepower at our disposal tomorrow, I expect us to try to score early. I expect us to play on the front foot. I expect us to press. The psychological advantage of being able to turn that crowd against its own players makes the most sense to me.

We may have to absorb some early pressure. That will tell us whether our defensive structure and defensive shape are up to it. At the very least, it will force us to think on our feet and adapt if necessary.

What we cannot do is remain passive like we did in Linz. That is a surefire road to disaster at this moment in time.

But do I believe for a second that we are going to sit back, absorb pressure for a full 90 minutes and simply hope to get lucky on the counter? No. I don’t believe that at all. I don’t believe that’s how we’re going to set up.

And I don’t believe that if we had possessed better attacking players and a healthier defence the last time we were there, we would have played exactly the way we did then either.

Maeda gets the disallowed goal in that game, but he doesn’t really hit his best form until a few weeks later. If we go into that game with Maeda in the form he showed when he scored that overhead kick at Celtic Park, I think we approach it differently.

The fact that we’re even debating whether we play our £11 million striker or our £6 million striker shows you where the difference lies in terms of the personnel available to us now.

That is why I don’t expect a game where we simply defend.

We will have to defend. There is no doubt about that. And as we have all said repeatedly, we will have to defend a lot better than we have been doing.

But I expect an attacking team. I expect a team which is on no account going there simply to take the game to extra time and penalties.

We couldn’t afford to even if we wanted to.

We have a major European game against Ferencváros on Thursday, and then another game against the Ibrox club next weekend.

So even with the best will in the world, you are not playing for penalties.

Penalty shootouts are such a lottery that usually only teams which see themselves as having a much smaller chance of winning the actual game deliberately construct an entire strategy around getting there.

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen teams playing for the chance to take part in the lottery. But big sides generally don’t do it because they don’t have to. They believe they can win the game before it gets that far.

So once again, this is another media invention.

It is another piece of spin.

And it misrepresents what the manager actually said.

We are not going into tomorrow playing for penalties. We are not practising them because Martin thinks that’s what it will take. And the idea that we might be practising them because we expect to get one during the course of the match is so ridiculous that it probably isn’t worth wasting time on.

Martin says the team does it routinely before knockout ties.

Fair enough. That is sensible preparation. It is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. That is the philosophy here. Whatever way the media wants to dress it up, that is what we’re actually talking about.

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