The media is trying to put pressure on Celtic’s debut Bhoys. It won’t work.

Tomorrow, a lot of players are going to make their Glasgow derby debut, and already the media is wondering how our new boys are going to handle it. All the usual talk is there. They’ve never played in a game like it in their lives. They’ve never been under this much pressure. Isn’t it tiresome?

Last season at Ibrox, during the penalty shootout, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain stepped up to take his kick and the commentators suggested that although he had played on huge occasions, he had never experienced pressure like it.

This is a guy who had played at the highest level in England and in the Champions League, yet apparently taking a penalty in front of the Ibrox fans represented some entirely new plane of human experience. Oxlade-Chamberlain scored. Of course.

I mean, it’s mind-bending, isn’t it?

How do you get into that headspace when that is your reality? Probably the same way you convince yourself that this is the singular fixture in all of world football. It isn’t.

Maybe once it could credibly make a claim to being amongst the greatest derbies in world football. It hasn’t occupied that position for a long time, certainly not since the old club died and the new operation crawled out of its grave, and quite possibly even before then.

The greatest derby in world football? I have my doubts. It isn’t even the most hateful derby in world football. We are second-rate in every metric.

But the odd thing is that there is so much pressure around this fixture, so much controversy and so much domestic scrutiny, that once you’re actually out there on the pitch it probably doesn’t matter how the game compares with Boca and River, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe or any of the other genuinely enormous rivalries around the world.

The question is what you’ve seen before, what level of pressure you’re used to and whether you’re surrounded by the kinds of people who have handled that pressure before.

Through all the headlines which are going to be written about Celtic having a handful of debutants in this fixture, the side across the city is likely to have even more players experiencing it for the first time.

And there is an additional pressure on them.

They are playing in front of a home support which is one of the most intolerant of failure and mistakes you will find anywhere in football. They are not surrounded by winners in the way our new players are, and they are not surrounded by as many people who have experienced this fixture at its sharpest, when everything was on the line.

Tomorrow we will find out who can cope with that pressure and who cannot.

Because whilst I don’t think this is anywhere near being the biggest derby in the world, the way it is hyped in the media, the way it is hyped by the fans and the way it is hyped by everyone inside the club across the city means that those players will step onto the pitch feeling that weight on their shoulders, whatever the truth about the fixture itself.

I think we hold most of the good cards.

That is no guarantee that we’ll win because football is full of X factors and those little moments where history turns on a dime. You can be up at one end of the pitch hitting the underside of the crossbar and seconds later conceding a goal at the other.

We’ve all seen it before. If it comes down to pure skill, I think we’ll win. If it comes down to pure luck, it’s anybody’s guess.

But there are little advantages you can turn in your favour, and Callum McGregor coming out today and essentially telling the players to remember what it means to be Celtic is music to my ears. I’m sure it’s music to all of ours.

Paulina will be particularly glad because that’s the mantra she repeats over and over again in her pieces. Remember who we are. Forget about who they think they are.

There is a steadiness and a calmness about the way we approach these games, and hopefully that calmness and steadiness gets us through this one.

But we can also turn that weight of expectation against them.

More of their players are likely to be experiencing this fixture for the first time than ours, and they are not surrounded by guys like Callum McGregor and Kieran Tierney, players who have won everything Scottish football has to throw at them.

The 100 per cent home crowd can be a blessing. In their case, it can also become a curse. If we score early, the atmosphere changes immediately.

Suddenly their players are not simply dealing with Celtic. They are dealing with their own supporters getting restless, angry and nervous. That’s when the 100 per cent home crowd becomes a millstone.

There are also a handful of players on their side who already have an overabundance of aggression. Wind those guys up to the maximum. Let them lose their heads in the atmosphere. Let them lose their composure.

More than anything else, our players have to remember that there is a reason why we’re champions.

Martin will not make too many changes tomorrow. He will not suddenly throw half a dozen new boys into this fixture. The team which lines up will still be recognisably Celtic, with a few additions here and there.

So, the media’s little attempt to draw attention to our debutants doesn’t particularly worry me. There will be plenty of players on the other side experiencing this for the first time too, and they won’t have as many battle-tested veterans around them to guide them through it.

At Ibrox, the tough talk from people like Graeme Souness is probably best ignored.

We have the team with more experience of the big battle. We have the team which knows the ground. We have the team which knows the fixture. We have the team which knows how to hold its nerve. And we know something else as well.

If you silence that home support and then turn it against its own team, that is one of the best weapons you can ever have in this fixture.

Those are the advantages we have to play.

The media knows that too, which is why so much of the focus is being put on our newcomers and whether they can handle the occasion.

But our battle-tested veterans, guys like McGregor and Tierney, have seen just about everything Scottish football can throw at them. They are the voices of calm. They are the guys who settle everyone else down.

So goes the theory anyway. Tomorrow, we find out.

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