It has been a great year for Celtic and they signed off on 2024 with a 4-0 win over St. Johnstone. Goals from Nicholas Kuhn and Daizen Maeda and a double from Kyogo made it a very happy new year for the Celtic support.
While Celtic were romping to victory the rangers were sharing the points away to Motherwell drawing 2-2. The gap is now 14 points between the Glasgow rivals ahead of the derby game at Ibrox on Thursday.
In 2024 Celtic lifted every domestic trophy on offer and they now sit proudly in the Celtic Park trophy room while the blue room is bare. The Champions will now travel with plenty of confidence across the city to face the rangers after dominating against St. Johnstone.
The blue half of the city remains in meltdown after dropping more points ahead of the big game at their place. Brendan Rodgers was able to rotate the team again and rested captain Callum McGregor.
Alistair Johnston returned to starting Celtic 11. The Celtic manager has plenty of food for thought as to which 3 midfield players will start against the rangers after another MOTM performance from Engels. Yang also deserves to be singled out for praise after his efforts on both wings.
Celtic have now kept six consecutive clean sheets and Schmeichel showed again today just how good his distribution can be. Like all Celtic fans the great Dane will be really looking forward to the game at Ibrox.
We have plenty to look forward to in 2025 with European Football in January and hopefully beyond, the defence of the Scottish Cup and no one would back against Celtic not lifting another League title.
14 Points Clear at New Year
Andrew Milne is Editor of More than 90 Minutes & Host of the Celtic Soul Podcast
Just glancing through another Celtic webpage online and noticed this article about a night Celtic took London by storm 54 years ago today, November 1970. The Hoops were in town to take part in Bobby Moore’s testimonial, the celebrated World Cup winning captain was a hero in the East End but not where I came from and I’m sure not where most of the 10,000 Celtic fans in attendance that night were from.
I was just 16 and had attended my first game at Paradise a year earlier when Celtic put the Eagles of Lisbon – Benfica to the sword in a 3-0 victory. I was also at the Fiorentina game in March another 3-0 win and then the iconic semi v Leeds at Hampden as part of the 136505 crowd. So this was my fourth game across the water; and my sixth in total as I had seen Celtic in Dublin v Shamrock Rovers in a friendly and Celtic v Waterford a month earlier in a 7-0 romp in front of 50,000. But the chance of a flying visit to London was attractive for a 16 year old and I booked flights which were cheap.
We left Aldergrove at 23:00 and arrived in Heathrow at midnight, unfortunately there were no buses till 6am to Buckinghamshire where my Mum’s sister was domiciled with her husband, both from Donegal. I found myself a corner and a few seats to spread eagle myself but the next thing an airport cop landed and said I couldn’t sleep there.
I told him my predicament and he was sympathetic and said just keep out of the way and I got a few hours nap before the early bus to my aunts. I spent the day with the Aunt and Uncle at their little council house on the edge of the thriving metropolis, another uncle stayed with them and worked with Massey Ferguson making Combine Harvesters as a welder. As the conflict had started in the 6 counties my Aunt tried her best to get me to stay with them and not go back to Belfast, the little moments in life when one decision could change your life path.
In the evening Uncle Mick and I headed into London on the train and then got a tube out to Upton Park or the Boelyn ground as it was also known. Being 16 the uncle didn’t offer me a beer but had a few ‘aperitifs’ himself in a local cockney pub long before the days of Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders.
It was a wet cold Monday night in London but almost 25,000 filled the neat little stadium with 10,000 Celtic fans in attendance, a great atmosphere. The match itself was played at a frantic pace with Celtic showing the English just why they were European champions 3 years earlier.
Both teams were filled with stars, the ‘Hammers’ had Geoff Hurst and Moore himself, Clyde Best, Frank Lampard’s Dad and Peter Eustace while Celtic had 8 of the Lisbon Lions and 10 of the team which lost to Feyenoord 6 months previously; 2 World Cup winners and 8 European Cup winners, plus subs like George Connelly and recently deceased Tommy Callaghan and sub goalie in both finals John Fallon, it was an eclectic mix of star studded exponents of the beautiful game. The game finished 3-3 with Celtic taking the lead each time to be clawed back by a tenacious West Ham with the big Clyde Best having a stormer.
My own personal recollection was the appearance of Jimmy Greaves in a West Ham shirt after his transfer from Spurs. The great goal scorer was my first footballing hero when I got interested in the beautiful game 5 years earlier, a trendsetter in Italy with Milan, the first £100,000 player (-£1!), denied a place in the world cup winning team by injury which gave his teammate that night Hurst the chance to let Ken Wolstenholme utter the iconic words, ‘it’s not over yet, it is now’ as he completed his hat trick.
Interestingly Greaves scored 2 at Hampden for Spurs when they played Celtic a few months after Lisbon in front of 90,000, a game coincidentally ended 3-3 as well. The atmosphere at the match that night in Upton Park was electric and the Celtic fans of course played their part, we were talking to some West Ham fans and they said they couldn’t bring that many fans across London to play Arsenal.
The display by Celtic just copper fastened their position as European elite at the time and the equal of anything in the English league as there was always some doubters south of Hadrian’s Wall but the English press really praised Celtic for their performance. After two European finals in 3 years Celtic went out in the quarter final to Ajax as they began their 3 in a row, but a 6th title in a row came to Parkhead and within a year they would be back in a Euro semi losing to Inter, it was still a team to be reckoned with.
Après match at West Ham my uncle and I crossed London on a tube and he directed me on the right train to Heathrow, he was part of the Donegal diaspora who made their way to London after WW2, the other 3 sisters to Clydebank, economic migrants, worked hard and made a life, all migrants should be embraced similar in the modern era, the Celtic family were all migrants in time.
My flight back from Heathrow was at 23:00 and I was back in Belfast at midnight, it was a bit of a hectic 24 hour visit, I wasn’t back again until the mid 1990’s but after the Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4 experience maybe it was a good decision, on the other hand it might have opened up a whole new experience, the little decisions which shape our lives.
The following May I was over at the Scottish Cup final which Celtic won 2-1 in a replay with goals by Harry Hood and a young Lou Macari in front of 103,000 and 120,000 at the first game. My first 10 games or so as a Celt left an indelible memory which stays to the present day. After that final I wasn’t at Paradise for over a decade until the early 1980’s but that’s another story.
Paddy McMenamin was born in Belfast with Donegal and Tyrone parents. He spent the 70’s in Long Kesh. He has been going to Paradise since the Benfica game in Nov. 1969. He lived in Donegal for 30 years but now lives in Galway. He returned to University at 50 and became a secondary school teacher of history and English.
Brendan Rodgers cut a happy figure after the St. Stephen’s Day 4-0 win over Motherwell at Celtic park when he spoke to the camera’s after the game and he will be looking for more of the same on home turf on Sunday when St. Johnstone are the visitors to Celtic Park.
Celtic dominated the game and were impressive in the second half and with strength in dept in the squad were able to call on the bench to introduce Kyogo, Hatate and Kuhn which must have put the fear of god into the visiting players.
Motherwell now face the rangers at home and will have gained some confidence from St. Mirren’s late win over them in Paisley. The Meltdown continues on a daily basis by the rangers fans on social media and Celtic fans are loving every minute of every post.
Celtic fans have one eye on the next Glasgow Derby on Jan 02 but sadly none of us will be there due to the on going ticket fiasco created by the blue half of Glasgow. Brendan Rodgers spoke after the Motherwell game about how good the fans were at Celtic Park backing the team and he can expect the same on Sunday if the players turn on the style.
I used to look forward to games in Ibrox about 8000 of us packed into the Broomloan end singing in a sea of Green and White as the teams came out. The lift it gave the Celtic players must have been inspiring for them but next week they will have to go it alone. An early Celtic goal will silence the bears and send Celtic fans in pubs and clubs around the globe wild.
But first we must take care of business against St. Johnstone who we hammered 6-0 at McDiarmid Park at the end of September.
Andrew Milne is Editor of More than 90 Minutes & Host of the Celtic Soul Podcast
A few seasons and an awful lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Ronnie Deila was the Manager of Celtic. We now have perhaps the opportunity, having in the meantime seen the very good and the very bad, to analyse Ronnie in some sort of historical perspective.
He was the Manager for two seasons 2014/15 and 2015/16. During that time, he won three Scottish trophies out of six – two Premier League titles and one Scottish League Cup, and in the other competitions, he reached the semi-final stage. Semi-final defeats are always hard to take, but one could argue that as one of them went as far as a penalty shoot-out and two others saw Celtic on the wrong end of draconian refereeing decisions at vital stages of the game which swung the balance, we are entitled to say “hard luck”. Of his two seasons, it is generally accepted that 2014/15 was a great deal better than 2015/16 – yet on both occasions, Celtic ended up the champions of Scotland. And then he was sacked
Ronnie’s record in Europe varied from the disappointing to the shocking. There were one or two games that were acceptable, and one that was a brilliant game of football between Celtic and Inter Milan reminding supporters of both teams of better days, but there were also some real shockers against opposition that could best be classed as moderate. Ronnie also has the unwelcome distinction of having been beaten TWICE in the Champions League qualifying stages after the first team to beat Celtic were disqualified on a technicality!
Before Ronnie arrived however, Celtic were in a strange position. They had won the Scottish League in 2014 (but also inflicted some really sub-standard performances on their supporters in the domestic Cup competitions) and Manager Neil Lennon suddenly left, it still being uncertain whether he jumped or was pushed. No real explanation was ever forthcoming, but the general perception, rightly or wrongly, was a dispute about the budget with the belief that Mr Lawwell and the Board were reluctant to sanction “marquee signings”.
Be that as it may, Ronnie arrived from nowhere – well from Stromgodset in Norway actually in summer 2014, as well known to Celtic fans as Wim Jansen and Jo Venglos had been when they came some years earlier, or indeed as familiar as Ange Postecoglou would be in 2021. The usual suspects for the job of Celtic Manager had been touted around in the Press with all sorts of journalists prepared to make a fool of themselves by stating categorically that “a source near the club told me late last night…” but it was the totally unknown Ronnie Deila.
In this respect at least the Board deserved credit. Far too often in the past, the media had told clubs who their next Manager was going to be. They had certainly told the gullible Rangers Board a few years previously to appoint Paul le Guen…and to their cost, they had done so when the man obviously had little clue about the English language let alone the complexities or nuances of Scottish football.
But Ronnie Deila it was and what a strange Scotland appeared to greet him with Celtic’s Premier League opponents being Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, St Johnstone, Dundee, Dundee United, Ross County, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Hamilton, Partick Thistle and St Mirren. The obvious omissions were still floundering in the lower reaches, and there was also no-one from Edinburgh to worry about, the Capital being once again at a footballing low ebb.
But Edinburgh would see Celtic playing European football! The Commonwealth Games in 2014 were being held at, among other places, Celtic Park and that included a visit from, of all people, the Queen! Whatever the nuances and ironies of that situation – and how it hurt at Ibrox! – Celtic played a couple of Champions League games at Murrayfield, the home of Scottish rugby, beating Reykjavik but playing absolutely abysmally to lose to Legia Warsaw in a couple of games, home and away, where it was extremely difficult to find anything good to say about anyone’s performance – and it was already clear that Ronnie Deila had a major job to do.
But then fate intervened. On a technicality, Celtic were awarded a 3-0 win in the Murrayfield game because the Poles had fielded an illegal player! As the first game in Poland had been 4-1, this meant that Celtic won the tie on away goals. One would have to say that this was fortuitous, to put it mildly, but then Celtic decided once again to infuriate their supporters by blowing up against a third rate Slovenian team called Maribor. The 1-1 draw in Slovenia was acceptable, but the 0-1 defeat at Parkhead was one of the worst European experiences that we could remember, with all the traditional Celtic European failings of missing chances, and then being punished for it.
This game, coming between a defeat at Inverness and then a miserable draw at Dundee, made one wonder, but it was far too early in Deila’s career for the knives to be out. In any case there were some good results as well with Stefan Johansen, who had joined the club in the January transfer window of 2014 looking particularly impressive, and an on-loan player called John Guidetti who seemed to be leased out to many clubs on a season-to-season basis beginning to score goals. On the other hand, there were a few dismal flops as well.
In the Europa League, Celtic actually managed to qualify from a section containing Red Bull Salsburg, Astra Giurgiu and Dinamo Zagreb. The football was unimpressive, the three home games were played in front of a half-empty stadium, but Celtic won two, drew two and lost two, which was enough to qualify them, so that Ronnie Deila could claim that he had achieved something that not all his predecessors could – namely that he would be playing in Europe after the New Year.
League form was inconsistent. There were some fine performances – they beat Aberdeen, the main challengers home and away, for example – but there were also some shockers. Hamilton Accies for example came to Celtic Park at the beginning of October and won 1-0, and the week between Christmas and the New Year saw a 0-0 draw with Ross County at Celtic Park which actually deserved a lot more boos than it got.
It was the Scottish League Cup which saw Celtic’s two best performances in autumn 2014 – 3-0 v Hearts and 6-0 v Partick Thistle both at Parkhead in front of crowds of less than 20,000. The absent thousands missed a great Guidetti hat-trick against Thistle, but the size of that crowd said quite a lot about how the defeat against Maribor still hurt. Indeed even for League games, the crowds were down to about 40,000, and they weren’t always well entertained. There was little wrong with Craig Gordon, Scott Brown, Virgil van Dijk, Jason Denayer and John Guidetti, but Efe Ambrose remained astonishingly accident prone and Emilio Izaguirre retained his infuriating habit of charging up the left wing beating several men, and then belting the ball hard and fast across the penalty area without looking up to see if there were any men there waiting!
Good progress was also made in the Scottish Cup with a 4-0 win over Hearts at Tynecastle in a game played eccentrically at the end of November, but it was the New Year that made a difference and in many ways brought an improvement. January saw four good League wins with not a goal conceded and the team now back at the top of the League after a slight wobble at the end of December.
But the game that really fired the supporters up was the game on February 1 at Hampden – the first ever game against the new Rangers since the death of the old ones in 2012. Celtic ignored most of the hype about this game, scored twice in the first half through Griffiths and Commons and were professional enough to hold out for the rest of the game. The game and its atmosphere were hardly pleasant – they seldom are – but it was almost nice to feel a certain normality returning, for wise Celtic supporters realised that Scottish football without Rangers was not really a very good idea. Be that as it may, Celtic supporters now realised that February was here, and the team was still in four tournaments!
They also benefitted from something else. The January transfer window is often much over-rated, and we recalled the awful year of 2010 when Tony Mowbray had almost tried to rebuild the whole team in January with dreadful results. Nevertheless, this year Ronnie had a good window, and it all came from the city of Discovery which would play a large part now in the rest of Celtic’s season.
Dundee United in what can only be described as “asset stripping” or even more crudely “money grubbing” saw fit to sell Gary Mackay-Steven and Stuart Armstrong to Celtic. Such naked greed got its reward in the shape of relegation in the future and we had the outlandish situation of Armstrong and Mackay-Steven helping Dundee United reach the final of the Scottish League Cup by beating Aberdeen on January 31, but then immediately joining their opponents in the Final! Admittedly, they could not play in the Final, but they were on the Celtic payroll and sat in the stand with green and white buttonhole flowers.
Celtic now took control of the SPL and a 4-0 beating of Aberdeen on March 1 at Parkhead more or less finished things even though Celtic immediately turned careless and lost inexplicably 0-1 to St Johnstone in midweek. The League was clinched emphatically on the Friday night of May 1 with a 5-0 beating of Dundee at Celtic Park, although it wasn’t formally confirmed until the following afternoon when Aberdeen failed to beat Dundee United at Tannadice.
Celtic’s departure from Europe in late February was at least spectacular and they went down with all guns blazing to old friends Inter Milan, both teams having fallen on bad times since 1967. 3-3 at Parkhead represented a spirited comeback, and then 0-1 in Milan had a lot to do with the harsh sending off of Virgil van Dijk. But at least Celtic departed Europe with their heads held high and with the respect of their supporters.
In the Scottish Cup Celtic had defeated Dundee 2-0 at Dens Park in early February, then returned to Dundee United a month later. It was a strange game, strangely refereed by Craig Thomson who sent off three men (at least one of them mistaken identity) as Celtic were really rather lucky to get a draw over the depleted Dundee United. But Celtic now played Dundee United another three times in a row in the Scottish League Cup final, the Scottish Cup replay and then the League – and they won them all, the League Cup final bringing particular joy for Ronnie Deila who had now won his first Scottish trophy in the game where, with Celtic winning 2-0, James Forrest insisted on taking a penalty kick…and missed out.
But so far so good for Ronnie Deila who seemed to have won over the Celtic fans who now included “Ron…Ron…Ronnie Deila” in their repertoire which went down particularly well with those old enough to recall Tom Jones and “My, my, my Delilah” of 1968. The team, give or take the odd bad result, were doing well and a treble looked there for the taking.
It would have been the first treble since Martin O’Neill in 2001, but Ronnie was denied by some poor refereeing in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup against Inverness Caledonian Thistle. It was Celtic’s first real contact with Steven McLean and he made two decisions, one of them clearly wrong, the other debatable and draconian, which deprived Celtic of the Scottish Cup. The first was a clear and undeniable hand ball in the penalty box which would have put Celtic 2-0 up and seen Inverness reduced to ten men, and the other was when goalkeeper Craig Gordon was sent off to compel the luckless Lukasz Zaluska to come on to face a penalty kick. He had a poor game, possibly at fault for all three goals as Celtic went down. It was the start of Ronnie’s bad luck in semi-finals and Inverness’s good luck continued in the final when they beat Falkirk in a game where Falkirk gave at least as good as they got.
And thus ended Deila’s first season in charge of Celtic. He won two domestic trophies out of three, regained a certain respectability in Europe after a dreadful start, and although attendances were down, no-one could have said that Celtic had a bad season, and Ronnie could feel proud of himself. A team was developing, it was felt, and there seemed no reason why next season could not bring more of the same, especially as Rangers would still not be in the Premier League as they went down in a play-off to Motherwell.
Deila’s second and last season was a great deal less happy. There was the retention of the Scottish Premiership which in any other club in the world would probably been enough to retain the Manager in his job – but this was Celtic. Both domestic trophies were lost in unfortunate circumstances at the semi-final stage, but it was probably the dismal showing in Europe which sealed Ronnie’s fate, as this time Celtic did not even see Europe after Christmas.
Personel wise there had been a few changes. Denayer had gone before the start of the season and van Dijk went after a few games. Guidetti was no longer there, but on the other hand Callum McGregor, Tom Rogic, Paddy Roberts and Kieran Tierney began to make an impression, and Leigh Griffiths was regularly among the goals. In the League, Aberdeen put up a better performance and their defeat of Celtic in February at Pittodrie led their more gullible supporters to believe that the could win the League with banners like “We’re coming to get you” displayed from the top tier of the Dick Donald Stand.
Crowds dropped again, and depression reigned, sometimes excessively and irrationally so, and the feeling grew that sooner or later, Ronnie would have to go. But he was winning the League – by no means in any swashbuckling, Lisbon Lions sort of a way, but Celtic were still at the top, and apart from the few over optimistic characters in the North East who were fed all sorts of rubbish by the media, everyone seemed to know this and accept this.
If there was one moment that decided the League, however, it was March 19 2016 at Rugby Park when Celtic, with Aberdeen still breathing down their necks, were struggling against Killie in a Saturday lunch time kick off. Frankly, they did not look like doing anything at all and two points looked as if they were about to be thrown away until Tom Rogic with a brilliant late strike from well outside the box saved the day. It was a great goal in itself and a great victory but the key things was that the goal went in at about 2.15 pm and was seen in Aberdeen as they were preparing for their game against Motherwell. The effect was instantly deflating, and a dispirited Aberdeen then went out, played like a team who knew that the title was gone, and lost 1-2 to Motherwell.
The League was duly clinched against Aberdeen at Celtic Park on May 8, but by that time Deila knew he was going. Ironically some of those who had been so vitriolic towards him now treated him as a hero, as indeed he was, for he had won two League titles out of two, a 100% record which only Jock Stein came anywhere near approaching. His sacking was not understood outside Scotland, and even within Scotland, it had people scratching their heads.
But of course it was the other three tournaments that did for him. Europe had been a disaster. Failing to beat Malmo to qualify for the Champions League was bad enough, but then in the Europa League section against Ajax, Fenerbahce and Molde, not a single win was recorded and only three draws. Frankly, this was not acceptable, and two of the defeats were in front of our own fans. Probably Deila’s fate was sealed by the New Year. Certainly, it was difficult to find anyone with a good word to say about him at the ground or on a supporters’ bus, and his assistant John Collins came in for even more irratiional criticism with dressing room disharmony, centring around the influential Kris Commons, by no means well hidden. On one occasion Commons had been seen to throw a tantrum after being substituted, and other stories filtered out as well. They were not necessarily true – but of course that doesn’t matter. It is what is believed that is the important thing.
Ronnie might just have redeemed himself with a domestic treble, but it was not to be. In the League Cup a good win over Raith Rovers at Parkhead followed by a better one against Hearts at Tynecastle brought Celtic to a semi-final on the last day of January against Ross County. Once again a referee played a part with Craig Thomson dismissing Efe Ambrose and awarding a penalty after something that could not even be called a clash and where the contact was minimal, and even accidental. It was an awful decision and it cost Celtic a place in the final. But what could not so easily be explained was why Celtic even with ten men did not put up a better show for the rest of the game, and why Leigh Griffiths made such a dreadful hash of a penalty kick. Full marks to the Highlanders but Celtic were woeful.
There was still the Scottish Cup, however. After dealing with the mighty men of Stranraer and East Kilbride, Celtic faced slightly tougher opposition in Morton at Celtic Park, and then Rangers at Hampden in the semi-final. The exit was the most painful way imaginable, that of a penalty shoot out, after a pretty even 120 minutes which had all neutrals throughout the world absolutely enthralled. Celtic hit the wood work frequently and Paddy Roberts missed an open goal, and that was painful enough but in the penalty shoot-out, it was Rangers who won through.
Rangers would get their deserved nemesis in the final against Hibs, but Ronnie was sacked in the wake of this semi-final shoot out defeat which plunged all Celtic fans into such despair. Yet we were the champions of Scotland for the fifth year in a row! And we sacked the Manager! It was hard to imagine that happening in any other country in the world, but this is Scotland and this is Celtic.
So what is history to make of these two bizarre years? I remain convinced that Deila was a good Manager, and that he deserves his small corner of Celtic history. But for the supporters his record was simply not good enough. He was succeeded by Brendan Rodgers, a similar flop in Europe, but Brendan literally won every Scottish trophy he entered for the next two and a bit seasons. The supporters never turned on Brendan like they did on Ronnie. But Brendan turned on us in a way that is not easy to forgive. We can forgive the likeable Ronnie for the few things that he got wrong, but Brendan, a far more gifted and successful manager is far more difficult to understand.
Motherwell came to Celtic Park with a plan to frustrate Celtic by parking the bus and trying to catch Celtic on the break today much like Dundee United did at Tannadice.
Their game plan was working until some decent work from Yang forced their goalkeeper into making the foul for a penalty as the clock ticked towards halftime.
There was no doubt it was a penalty and after the VAR check Arne Engels scored another from the spot to make it 1-0 at half time and a chance for Brendan Rodgers to put a plan in place for the second half.
Three goals in the second half summed up just how much of the ball Celtic had in the game. With every Celtic goal Motherwell were forced to go forward to try and salvage something from the game, this left plenty of gaps for the Celtic players to exploit.
Maeda added a second with a bullet of a header before second half substitutions Kuhn and Hatate made it 3 and 4. Celtic dominated the game and now look towards the visit of St. Johnstone on Sunday to Celtic Park a game Celtic will be expected to win before the team cross the city for the Glasgow Derby against the rangers.
Engels picked up the sponsors MOTM award but Callum McGregor deserves high praise for running the midfield and being available at all times to take the ball and carry it towards the visitors goal. He is a leader that leads by example.
Celtic could have scored a few more but were denied by Motherwell keeper, Oxborough on a number of occasions. Adam Idah got a starting place ahead of Kyogo and he will be disappointed with not scoring in the first half on a day when Celtic had 23 shots ( 7 on target).
All in all a comfortable afternoon for Hoops. Three points in the bag and top of the table 12 points clear of the rangers who lost 2-1 on the road in Paisley. Everybody loves a late goal well done to St. Mirren.
Andrew Milne is Editor of More than 90 Minutes and host of the Celtic Soul Podcast
It’s been a good season so far for Celtic, unbeaten domestically, still in the hunt for the knock out stages of the Champions League and a nice piece of silverware added to Celtic Park Trophy room while the Blue room remains bare across the city. The rangers fans are getting giddy after Celtic dropped points away at Dundee United but there are no alarms bells ringing down Parkhead way.
There are still 6 points to play for before Celtic travel across the city to Ibrox for a 3pm kick off on Jan 02. Before then we have two home games against Motherwell (26 Dec) and St. Johnstone (29 Dec) while the rangers have two away games and travel to Paisley to take on St. Mirren (26 Dec) and Motherwell (29 Dec).
Motherwell sit in fourth place in the league and after watching Dundee United park the bus on Sunday may well come with the same tactics to the East End of Glasgow and try and frustrate Celtic.
The last time both teams met, Celtic had played midweek in the Champions League and took away a hard earned point against Atalanta. The result shut up a lot of Brendan Rodgers critics and the Celtic players had no European hangover when they travelled to Motherwell full of confidence.
Celtic ran out 3-0 winners with Luke McCowan opening the scoring on his first start in the Hoops. Stand in captain Alister Johnston headed in the second and Adam Idah stroked home the third from close range. I would expect Celtic to once again be too strong for the visitors and keep the festive cheer going.
Merry Christmas to all our readers, sponsors and contributors to both the fanzine and the podcast and a big shout out to everyone who shopped with us on our online store for Christmas gifts and stocking fillers.
Enjoy Christmas Day and we will be back covering the Celtic fan journey on St. Stephens Day.
Andrew Milne is Editor of More than 90 Minutes & Host of the Celtic Soul Podcast
