Kilmarnock are the only Scottish side to have beaten Celtic so far this season.
We may only be at the start of October and seven matchdays into the Premiership season. But having a win over last year’s treble winners is a pretty big accomplishment, even if we were in a different position back then.
Kilmarnock have had a bit of a strange season results-wise. Taking away their League Cup group stage matches against lower-league opposition, they’ve played nine matches so far this campaign.
Just two of those have been Killie victories — against ourselves and Rangers. While beating our rivals is hardly some amazing achievement right now, it’s still pretty strange that Killie have been able to up their game for those matches but not win against the likes of Dundee, Ross County and Motherwell.
“It’s ironic that two games we’ve won have been against Celtic and Rangers but you’d be naïve not to try to use that to your advantage,” said former Celt Stuart Findlay to the Daily Record on Friday.
“I’ve been to Celtic Park a lot of times now over my Kilmarnock career and there’s been games where you know you’re going to have to do something special to get a result. But the manager has instilled in us, in both games against the Old Firm this season at half-time as we went in level, that we have to believe we can go out and win this game of football.
“If we don’t go in with that mindset then there’s no point us going on Saturday and we may as well get ready for the international break. We have to go into the game fully believing something can happen.
“We’re under no illusions how difficult a game it’s going to be. Celtic are a different animal now than they were at the start of the season, they were always going to play themselves into the form they’ve shown in the last few weeks.
“But we can only focus on what we can provide in the game and hopefully it’ll be enough to get us a positive result.”
Kilmarnock will arrive at Celtic Park without much fear. Having beaten us already this season, they are likely to believe that they can do it again. That’s how professional footballers think.
The reality is that it will be a whole lot harder this time around. The lack of an astroturf pitch at Celtic Park is an obvious factor in our favour. We are also just in a much better place than in mid-August.
Both of those high-profile Killie wins arrived during that month. They’ve actually not won a game since putting us out of the cup.
Home matches have tended to be a little bit sticky for us so far this season. We’ve gone in at 0-0 against both St. Johnstone and Dundee so it would be great to see a few goals fired in early on against the Ayrshire side.
In other news, Lazio vlogger shares cool Celtic Park footage from the night that could have been
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