Ferguson wants his team to kick Celtic off the park. Why doesn’t he admit it?

What is it with people in our game hiding everything behind neat little euphemisms and soft language? For a while today, I thought perhaps someone was finally just going to tell it straight. Someone was going to be honest.

I thought someone was going to say exactly what they meant.

When I read Barry Ferguson urging the Ibrox players to be aggressive with Celtic tomorrow, for just a second I thought: “wow, that’s honest.”

I mean, I might not have liked it, but at least it would have been honest.

Then, of course, he clarified it. He wasn’t suggesting they should try to kick us off the pitch. He meant they should get in our faces, press us and make things uncomfortable.

Well, you could just have said that.

Because Ferguson chose a very specific word with a very specific meaning, then immediately tried to narrow what he meant by it.

And the funny thing is that this is hardly new territory for him. When he was managing Alloa against Celtic in 2022, Ferguson used almost exactly the same language, saying he had asked his players to be “aggressive” and to get in Celtic’s faces, while insisting that did not mean trying to hurt anyone. But they then tried to kick us off the park.

So, I don’t really understand the reluctance just to say it plainly.

Yes, I understand that we live in an age where going too far out on the limb is frowned upon. But when you’re already halfway out there and everyone understands exactly what you’re talking about, what is gained by suddenly pretending the word meant something softer?

Because there is a perfectly legitimate football argument underneath it.

We are the team with the real attacking threat. We are the team with the players everybody in Scotland is talking about.

They too have added attacking players, and those players may turn out to be very capable, but most of them have still to establish themselves in the way ours have. And in midfield, I think we have more skill. They have built a much more physical side. It therefore stands to reason that part of their strategy will be to play a physical game.

I am not saying that necessarily works. I am saying that, from their point of view, it makes footballing sense. If they want to break up our rhythm, stop us building momentum and prevent us imposing our style on the match, one obvious way of doing it is to make the game aggressive and physical.

Get close. Make contact. Break things up.

Stop Celtic settling.

There is nothing particularly sophisticated about it, but that does not mean it is stupid. And there is another calculation they may make.

They are at home in front of a 100 per cent home support. The officials will know that every major decision against the home team will produce an enormous reaction from inside the stadium. That doesn’t mean a referee deliberately refuses to send an Ibrox player off. I am not going to pretend I can know what is going through an official’s head.

But crowd pressure exists. Every football supporter understands that. And if you believe you can push the physical line hard before the referee finally decides enough is enough, then of course you are going to test where that line actually is.

That is why Ferguson’s idea, although it sounds a little savage and a little primordial, is not actually all that stupid when you think about it.

Which makes it stranger that he immediately felt the need to soften it. Especially when this is clearly something he has thought about before.

We also know this type of approach is not alien to the current Ibrox side. Ferguson himself previously praised an Ibrox team for playing aggressively against Celtic and pressing from the front, while Nico Raskin said after the 3-2 win at Celtic Park in March 2025 that the instruction had been to go aggressive and put Celtic under pressure.

So, let’s stop pretending this is some shocking concept. I’m sure Martin O’Neill is perfectly well aware that this is one possible strategy tomorrow. It has been a feature of Derek McInnes teams against Celtic for years. McInnes likes players who compete, disrupt and make opponents work for every inch.

That is why I expect guys like Cammy Devlin and Raskin to be central to whatever they try to do. The plan will be simple enough. Get close to everything in a green shirt that moves.

Hit tackles early. Make Celtic’s players understand very quickly that they are in for a long afternoon. Disrupt the rhythm before the rhythm starts.

Then it becomes the officials’ responsibility to make sure the match does not cross the line from aggressive football into something else. And that, for me, brings the much bigger questions.

There is always a line, and if an Ibrox player crosses it tomorrow, the referee has to be prepared to deal with it regardless of the reaction from 50,000 people around him. Will he? Will any of them?

That’s where my confidence starts to disappear.

Of all the various scenarios I can imagine tomorrow, the officials imposing themselves immediately and making absolutely clear that nobody is going to be allowed to kick Celtic out of the game is not especially high on my list.

That is the concern. Not Barry Ferguson using the word “aggressive”. For once, I almost wish he’d stuck with it. At least then we’d all be talking honestly about the game we expect to see. And the officials would not be able to hide from it.

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