Celtic return to league action against Brian Rice’s Hamilton Accies at the Fountain of Youth Stadium tomorrow at noon. That’s the latest name for what used to be known as New Douglas Park by the way.
This will be our first game since humbling Rangers twelve days ago in their own backyard and keeping up our perfect league start to the season which has seen us win four from four.
Rangers will be at home to Livingston later that afternoon in what is likely to be a home win for the light blues as they parade their new £7 million saviour Ryan Kent who they are all expecting to fire them to the league championship this season even though he completely failed to do that last term.
Livi actually sit third in the table having gone unbeaten in the opening season fixtures with two wins and two draws and are usually a tough nut to crack under Gary Holt’s leadership but it would be a real punt to expect them to produce anything tomorrow.
So that means we need to keep on winning or otherwise, we’ll have thrown away the lead in the league we’ve worked so hard to establish.
Our last four visits to South Lanarkshire thave seen us win each game relatively comfortably with scores of 3-0, 4-1, 2-1 and 3-0 and we haven’t dropped any points against them side since Ronny Deila’s tumultuous tenure as manager.
Injury wise it looks like we’ll continue to be without the services of the recovering Jozo Simunovic and Kristofer Ajer whilst Mikey Johnston will also likely miss out after picking up a knock.
Expect Elhamed to start at centre back beside Christopher Jullien with a possible start for Moritz Bauer at right-back and we could see the involvement of new loan signing, winger Mohamed Elyounoussi at some stage. Apparently, talks have also taken place between Scott Sinclair and Neil Lennon to try and determine the wingers future so who knows, he may appear on the team sheet too.
By and large, most of our international players returned without injury.
Odsonne Edouard impressed with the French under 21’s scoring twice in two consecutive games against Albania and the Czech Republic though the Scotland players didn’t fare so well.
James Forrest and Callum McGregor toiled laong with everyone else ina navy blue jersey as Scotland were taken apart 2-1 by Russia – the scoreline flattered them – and 4-0 by world number ones Belgium.
I have actually written articles about Scotland international games in the past but just couldn’t be bothered this time. There’s an apathy and malaise caused by consistently embarrassing performances.
Steve Clarke will need time and there is no better man for the job but on the evidence of these past two games he has mission impossible on his hands. The quality of the Scotland squad has improved greatly in the past few years but that can’t make up for the players being bereft of any real passion or belief. Clarke has had a baptism of fire with two of his first four games being against an awesome Belgium side who finished third at the World Cup and will be favourites for next summers Euros but still, they could at least have made it difficult for them. They didn’t.
Russia are also riding high after their impressive feats at least summers World Cup but on Friday it was 2-1 going on 4 or 5-1 as Scotland made the visitors look like Brazil thanks to some spiritless and standoffish play. And this was even after being gifted a goal of a start. In a months time, there’s another international break and expect more misery.
Anyway back to sunny Hamilton and they’ve struggled so far this term. They barely made it out of their League Cup group section which included a draw and penalty defeat to lowly Queen’s Park. They were then eliminated in the second round by fellow strugglers Kilmarnock.
So far in the league, they’ve won one from four with a draw and two defeats suffering heavy losses away to newly-promoted Ross county (3-0) and at home in the Lanarkshire derby to Motherwell (3-1) which could have been by much more. Last time out they got a credible 2-2 draw away at Hearts though the Edinburgh sides start to the season has been nothing short of disastrous and they haven’t won a league game since March so the merits of a point against Hearts these days is debatable.
Under Rice, they’ve proven far more free-scoring and therefore inevitably easier to score against than they were under his predecessor, the safety-first Martin Canning.
Still, I’d be surprised if they try to be too gung-ho against us considering the firepower we possess and will likely be organised and combative. Rice has had two full weeks to prepare for this fixture after all.
All that being said I expect us to thump them. 4-1 is my prediction. Then we move onto the away Europa League tie to French side Rennes next Thursday. They play at newly-promoted Brest tomorrow so safe to say we’ll have one on how they do as well.
But the priority for the moment is another three-points and avoiding any injuries. I’d even go as far as to put Edouard on ice until the Europa game and deploy Griffiths or Bayo tomorrow.
We shall see.
Here’s what happened the last time we visited Hamilton:
....Always A Tim! 