The 2023/24 Scottish Premiership campaign has turned into a mixed one for Celtic fans, as manager Brendan Rodgers‘ second spell at Parkhead has had both highs and lows, but a complete lack of on pitch performance related consistency.
Yes, Rodgers can rightly point to the injury issues that we have sustained across the campaign, and he and others would point to a poor January transfer window that in no way helped alleviate those ‘more important’ gaps when it came to the 51 year old’s first team selection options.
But we all know we had a good advantage at the top of the table and we, for whatever reason that can be used as an excuse, let it slip and we were left very recently in the position of trying to play catch up. In some ways we left ourselves needing a 3 way handicap betting explained, when the Scottish Premiership is rarely a 3 way affair.
With Rodgers being insistent that the season was not over yet, we did just that and with our victory over St Johnstone last weekend, we again find ourselves in top spot in the table – but the margin is narrow, however, it potentially gives us a small mental advantage once again and we absolutely have to maximise that and make it count during the run in to the end of the year.
Whilst the eyes of Hoops fans naturally remain on this campaign, Celtic themselves do need to continue looking forward to the coming 2024/25 season, and Monday afternoon saw quite a major announcement when it came to our pre season plans for the new campaign.
As the business end of the season looms there are definitely quite a few unknowns given the games that remain, but fans now know that we will be returning to the United States of America and we will be facing English Premier League side Chelsea in one of our warm up encounters.
We will face off against current manager, Mauricio Pochettino’s, ridiculously expensively assembled side on July 27 at the utterly iconic Notre Dame Stadium – some will know it is the home field of the University’s famed Fighting Irish football team.
The clash against the Stamford Bridge outfit will be the final game of a three match tour over on American soil, and despite their struggles in more recent seasons (ownership, managerial, spending on players who continue to fail to find any form that is acceptable to their fans), whilst they currently sit in eleventh place in the Premier League table, this will be a major test for Rodgers and our Celtic boys as their quality cannot be underestimated even if they have again failed to click properly this season.
After the struggles that we have faced this campaign, it is a game that could well prove to be incredibly important when it comes to mental strength and a desire to be greater, and allow us to make a far bigger statement in our own domestic (and European) campaigns in 2024/25.
The game is obviously quite a way off right now, and we need to know who our other opponents will be, whilst learning what the full pre season programme is, but it is a tie, for all the obvious reasons, that Hoops fans (particularly those in the United States, and those who can afford to take in a football holiday during the summer months) will be absolutely relishing.
Who can blame them in a 77,000 capacity bowl that should be absolutely rocking, and it has, of course, been a full ten years since we were last Stateside and that will only fuel the imagination of more local fans.
What will tantalise fans even further is we also know our trip across the Atlantic Ocean will take in the US capital of Washington DC and North Carolina – so opposition potential is endless.
We can assume Chelsea will definitely be the headline clash though.
