On Sunday Celtic play Aberdeen in another semi-final, our seventh in a row to be precise.
The reward is an obvious one, a place in the Scottish Cup final and the chance to be 90 mins away from delivering an unprecedented ‘Treble-Treble’ winner.
In the semis, we meet Derek McInnes’s Aberdeen. They’ve struggled in the league this season sitting joint third on 58 points and with only five games to go they are way off the 73 points total they accrued last season which secured them a fourth consecutive second-place finish.
However, they have been far better in the cups than in last terms campaign having already reached the League Cup final which they lost 1-0 to us in a tight and uneventful game where we just eked out the victory thanks to a Ryan Christie goal.
In their last semi-final, they caused somewhat of shock by downing Rangers 1-0 thanks to a Lewis Ferguson headed winner and have also since eliminated the light blues from this competition via a surprise 2-0 win at Ibrox in the quarter-final replay after a 1-1 draw at Pittodrie.
At home, this season they have been uncharacteristically poor with only eight wins from seventeen but on the road have won nine from sixteen with only four losses.
Their danger man is striker Sam Cosgrove who cost peanuts from Carlisle Utd last season but has bagged 20 goals in all competitions this term, sixteen of them in the league whilst at the back, they also have the much sought after Scotland internationalist – not that that is anything to shout about at the moment – defender Scott McKenna who we ourselves have been linked to. Both are only 22 years old.
Dons captain Graeme Shinnie is suspended for the game meaning the Celtic midfield can worry less about having their ankles and shins kicked all afternoon.
The last time we met was on league duty at Celtic Park on March 9th and the visiting Dons kept it tight and frustrated Celtic to a 0-0 draw in Neil Lennon’s first home match in charge of his second tenure as boss.
Previous to that we had won all three encounters – two in the league and the aforementioned League Cup final – but all were close with two 1-0 wins and a dramatic 4-3 victory at Pittodrie on Boxing Day.
The last time Neil Lennon’s Celtic came up against Derek McInnes Dons in the cup things didn’t go too well. They beat us 1-0 at Celtic Park in the 5th round back in 2014.
After taking a ninth-minute lead through Anthony Stokes Celtic looked to be on easy street but the men from the granite city turned it around via goals from Russell Anderson and Peter Pawlett. All three have since long departed Scottish football.
It was a shocking defeat at the time and our second early cup elimination of the season after being stunned 1-0 at home in the 3rd round of the League Cup by minnows Greenock Morton. Those losses coupled with disappointing Champions League results contributed to Neil Lennon’s decision to leave the club that summer. At one point we had actually gone unbeaten all season in the league until we fell in late February to, you guessed it, Aberdeen. That occurred only two and a half weeks after they had put us out of the cup.
But that was a long time ago and there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. He who we don’t like to name ie: Brendan has come and gone and in his time we won 24 straight cup competition games and five back to back cups as a result.
Aberdeen came close to derailing that and the invincibles season when they pushed us close in the magnificent 2016 Scottish Cup final but we prevailed a the death thanks to Tom Rogic and the rest is history.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t give them much chance at all on Sunday but then we get to the predicament of Neil Lennon’s Hampden record. You see under him the last time we only won two of nine available domestic cups. In that time we went to Hampden on eleven occasions and lost five of them and most of the losses came to some really esteemed names including Ross County, Kilmarnock, Hearts and St Mirren. The performances against County and St.Mirren were particularly atrocious and were really low moments for the club. Overall three of those Hampden losses were in semis and in all of them we were overwhelming favourites.
In his time at Hibs Lenny also took the Easter Road side to two cup semis at the national stadium. He lost both, the first of which was to Sunday’s opponents in this very competition almost three years to the day.
So that doesn’t make for good reading and feeds into the theory that Lenny might just not have it in him to get us over the line for the treble-treble based on his previous record in cups.
So it’s safe to say that Sunday is huge for him. If he wins it and then gets the league wrapped up then I think it’s a near certainty that the club will likely confirm him as the permanent replacement to Brendan in the lead up to the cup final. That makes sense in regards to a big PR moment and morale boost in advance of such a big day. But none of that will happen if he loses on Sunday. I don’t know if it will completely bring down the curtain completely on his chances of getting it permanently but it certainly won’t help and a win at Ibrox in the league will then likely be his last possible hope of salvation.
I’m sure he’s well aware of all of this as are the players and we can only hope they deal with the pressure accordingly.
As stated before, I have mixed feeling about Neil getting the job permanently. I don’t see it as progressive at all and considering the credentials of our last manager for me it’s a pretty resounding downgrade.
The fact that we’ve really struggled performance wise since his return with a plethora of last minute goals being required to seal points and Rangers being all over us with ten men for half an hour at Celtic Park plus limply dropping points to Livingston last weekend hasn’t done much to change that perception.
I saw one fans poll during the week which indicated that 80% of respondents weren’t too excited about him getting the job for next season and the following day several bookmakers installed Belgium national team coach Roberto Martinez as the new favourite to get the job.
Is all of this in anticipation of a potential disaster come Sunday afternoon? Or just misplaced pessimism and a knee jerk reaction to one bad result?
I guess we shall see.
No matter who is in the manager’s chair though I like all of us just want Celtic to win and to keep the good times rolling.
....Always A Tim! 