A rather interesting question posed on PM by @Galaxy as to why the match is kicking off at 3pm on Thursday. My understanding is it’s essentially a legacy of staunch Presbyterianism & a strong Protestant work ethic in Scotland whereby Christmas wasn’t historically considered a significant holiday. You’d have had factory & shipyard employees traditionally working on Christmas Day back in the day, & even retail & office workers too up until recent decades. Although Christmas is a bigger celebration nowadays they have an additional public holiday on January 2 instead following Hogmonay/the bells. Many thanks for the question & very happy to answer it.
Yet again there’ll be no away support at the fixture but it’s meant to be the last game before it’s finally resolved. Rangers come into the game after a couple of dire displays at St Mirren (2-1 defeat) & Motherwell (salvaged a 2-2 draw) over Christmas. As I’ve said before, it’s a boom & bust cycle with them & their recent positive European results & taking Celtic all the way in the League Cup Final is now well in the rear-view mirror.
Their away record in the league is 3-2-4 with only 9 goals scored in 9 games & they’re not trained to pass, probe & break teams down with progressive football. But they’re a tougher prospect at home as they’re direct, hard working & full of running. They hit early balls to the attack but commit men forward to the landing areas & look to pounce on second balls. It means they’re more reliant on chaos than a structured approach.
They’re also probably more effective without the ball in some respects due to a combination of their limitations in possession & how they can force turnovers with their pressing. They adopted a kind of mid block (wanky term) in recent Celtic games where they let the centre halves have the ball & man marked the Celtic midfield trio. Diomande & Raskin had a dual role in that when Celtic tried to progress the ball forward & the full backs came infield to get on the ball it was the trigger for them to jump off their man marking assignment & press hard. It’s how they forced the error from Taylor for the first goal in the cup final but it’s punishing physically & they couldn’t sustain it for the full 90/120 recently.
Their defence is relatively weak to begin with & they have a defensive injury crisis - Tavernier has been ruled out too albeit he’s been absolutely tormented by Maeda in these games. I’d like to think Celtic will be better at playing through the Rangers press this time around & there should be chances to get driving at their defence. I think Scales has won the jersey back from Trusty & the only two real selection dilemmas are left back & midfield. I’d like to see Alex Valle given a chance from the start but Rodgers tends to prefer Taylor for the big games. I think McGregor & Hatate are certain to start so it comes down to Bernardo or Engels for the last midfield spot. Engels has won stadium MOTM for the last two games & he was particularly good in the last game but Bernardo has produced several strong derby performances over his season & a half & I’d go with him.
The hun support seem to be absolutely seething with the team & manager. They were plotting all these scenarios online after Celtic drew at Tannadice the week before Christmas about overturning the points deficit in the league & making a statement in this game to launch the title comeback…but then they had those two shocking results themselves. So like the GGA football championship round robin, there isn’t really any jeopardy for Celtic 14 points clear. But equally you don’t want to let them breathe either & you need to be ruthless when you’re dominant in this fixture. It’s one of those ones where I expect the huns to be very loud & defiant at the start but the atmosphere could become toxic if Celtic start well & score early.
They’ll be hitting the long diagonals to the wide players & direct balls to Igamane & looking to force corners, attacking throw ins, get to loose balls first & fall over to win freekicks etc. So Celtic will need to stand up to that & then be clean with their passing to put some order on the game. I always mention Rodgers’ record in these games (16-3-1) & how surely the law of averages suggests they’ll get the better of Celtic in a one off game at some stage soon, but it would probably have to involve an element of bad Celtic errors & good luck for the huns.
There’ll also be a lot of pressure on the officials after the VAR controversy at the cup final. Don Robertson will be the man with the whistle.
And if Rangers-Celtic doesn’t whet the appetite enough, we have a Tayside derby to follow at 5.30pm too.