Tomorrow Celtic entertain Rangers for the first time this season in both clubs final clash before they enter three week winter break.
Our recent record in the fixture has been pretty outstanding with thirteen wins, two draws and only two defeats in the last fifteen and two wins from both encounters this season.
Aggregate wise we’ve scored an incredible 36 goals in that time with only 10 conceded.
Of course, we’ve faced stiffer opposition from Ibrox since Steven Gerrard’s arrival with them having beaten us twice on their home patch last season although we prevailed in both home games against them by 1-0 and 2-1 scorelines.
This season we’ve triumphed 2-0 at Ibrox and most recently 1-0 in the League Cup final.
We took them to the cleaners over in Govan back in September, sitting in and hitting them on the break all afternoon with their offence rarely able to trouble Fraser Forster due to the stellar defensive efforts of Jullien, Ajer, Boli Bolingoli and Elhamed who were all fantastic on the day.
Upfront Edouard led the line superbly all day, scoring and being part of the three-pronged breakaway along with Olivier Ntcham that saw Jonny Hayes seal the deal with the second goal in injury time.
More recently in the Cup final a hungrier Rangers dominated the midfield and created a hat full of chances for their striker Alfredo Morelos but he found Fraser Forster in irresistible form and that combined with the introduction of Edouard off the bench helped to get us over the line thanks to a marginally offside goal from Jullien.
Morelos is their main man and has scored a pretty incredible 28 goals already this season but has it seems a mental block when he sees the green and white hoops and he has failed to net in eleven previous games against Celtic.
Both teams have been in imperious form this season on all fronts and have been more or less been matching each other stride for stride on every front since July.
We have won eleven straight league games since our first and so far only domestic defeat this season against Livingston back in early October. Previous to that we’d won six and drawn one of our opening seven league games so that’s seventeen wins from nineteen with 54 scored and only 11 conceded and we sit top with a five-point advantage over Rangers who have played a game less and have recorded 15 wins with two draws and a solitary defeat against us back on the first of September.
They have been pretty free-scoring themselves with 51 goals and ten conceded and are now 14 games unbeaten in the league though they have dropped points in that time with score draws at Hearts and Aberdeen.
Both clubs have also had impressive European campaigns thus far with each progressing to the last 32 of the Europa League which has seen the Scottish club coefficient rocket from 25 to 15 as a result.
Selection wise both sides will have more or less full compliments with Morelos returning from suspension and Steven Davis also having recovered from a recent period out for Rangers and Edouard, Bolingoli and Griffiths have returned in recent weeks for Celtic after sustaining injuries though Elhamed and Elyounoussi are unlikely to be involved for the home side tomorrow.
Both of those players have been a bit of a loss though Frimpong has stepped up big time to replaced Elhamed in the right-back berth and had Ryan Kent in his back pocket until his sending off just after the hour mark in the League Cup final.
The loss of the pace and power of the Norwegian internationalist Elyounoussi has been really keenly felt over the past month or so. He was on fire having scored seven in eleven games until his injury and the team have lacked energy and tempo since his departure. He was brought back in the for the recent cup final but looked way off the pace and hasn’t been seen since.
Rangers haven’t won at Celtic Park since October 2010 and the best they have done is two draws in the past ten encounters with eight defeats and an aggregate heavily weighted in Celtic’s favour of 22-3 and they have failed to score in seven of those games and have never scored more than once in that time.
So the statistics all point to Celtic but truth be told they have been in better form than us recently and will feel they owe us one after the League Cup final.
But the dynamic of them only having 800 fans in the corner does play a part and hopefully, that can inspire us to get the socks pulled up and back at it. With Edouard starting the on-field dynamic should also be very different.
There’s no doubt that the French striker spooks them as his five goals against them shows and indeed his introduction front the subs bench on the hour mark at Hampden three weeks ago was a real gamechanger.
Let’s hope for a fast start and to put Rangers back in their place and for Celtic to take a huge step to nine in a row with an eight-point advantage as we go into winter break and January transfer window where it looks inevitable we’ll strengthen.
A repeat of this would be nice…………
....Always A Tim! 