At the end of November we posted Celtic’s hectic December schedule that would see them play a game every three days in the run-up to yesterday’s Ibrox tie.
The question was if Celtic could handle the amount of games in December and would their unbeaten record in the league fall as a consequence of the fixture pile up.
Well these questions were answered by Brendan Rodgers and his side as they went the whole of December without losing a game and that includes drawing against Manchester City at the Etihad, a game which Celtic could have won.
Celtic looked like it might be too much during the Motherwell game at the start of the month, going down 2-0, but the resilience and fight of Rodgers’ side seen them win the game 4-3 in an epic encounter with the Steelmen.
Celtic’s mid December form had remarkably been called a ‘slump’ by some in the media because the team were scraping through performances. Making no mention of injury’s to key men as well as big personnel changes to keep the squad fresh. The bhoys may not have been at their scintillating best but they were still better than any side they came up against domestically.
Also, after talk of Dembele falling out of form because he hadn’t scored in a while and hearing that the Ibrox side had a man called Joe Garner we were supposed to be running scared for the Hogmanay fixture with the Govan outfit. How did that work out?
Moussa Dembele has scored five goals just against Sevco, Joe Garner has scored three goals in total for his club. How embarrassing, well maybe not as embarrassing as sending your players to the accident and emergency down the road because you can’t afford private doctor fees.
So as we sit here on 1st January with a nineteen point lead with a game in hand. The BIGGEST lead at this stage between 1st and 2nd place in Scottish football history are Celtic as good as we think they are. Indeed, they are and they’re going to get better.
With a well earned break to Dubai coming up for the players they should recharge their batteries and get ready for the second half of the season where they’ll look to wrap up the league as soon as possible and get ready for the plethora of Champions League qualifiers come June.
The future’s bright, Glasgow is green and white.
HH