Aberdeen striker Sam Cosgrove has acknowledged Celtic’s quality, but has warned the Hoops of his own ahead of Sunday.
The Dons go face-to-face with Neil Lennon’s men this weekend in their Scottish Cup semi-final clash at Hampden Park. Derek McInnes’ side have never won against Celtic at Hampden in three attempts. The Hoops, meanwhile, have won their last nine straight at Hampden.
Cosgrove has come up against Celtic on five occasions, and has only been successful in one of them. Aberdeen’s 1-0 win at Parkhead on trophy day last season was the only time they’ve won against Celtic in their last 15 attempts. They fell to the Hoops at Hampden as recently as December in the Betfred Cup final too.
Cosgrove has scored once against the Parkhead side earlier this season, and was part of the side that drew 0-0 at Celtic Park last month. And the big forward, speaking in the Scottish Sun, has warned Celtic they’ll be facing a much better player at Hampden when they come up against him.
“It’s well known that Celtic have that quality and when they need that one chance they put it away. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the back of the net that day (Betfred Cup final).
“I think I’m a different player since that final I’ve had to adapt my game a bit more and I think the team sometimes relies on me to get goals. I’m happy to take that pressure and I put pressure on myself in every game to score goals. I’m looking forward to it.
“You look at the 0-0 at Celtic a couple of weeks ago. You could argue that, as much control as they had, we were unlucky to come away without a win with the chances we had.”
No complacency evident in the Celtic ranks
Celtic won’t allow complacency to creep into their game on Sunday – they simply can’t afford to.
But, when you look at Cosgrove’s previous performances against Celtic, it doesn’t read well for him. He did next to nothing in last month’s 0-0 draw, and his goal at Pittodrie was only courtesy of a fortunate penalty in a game he offered very little.
You would be forgiven for forgetting that Cosgrove actually played five times against Celtic too. He’s been so anonymous in all of them that it’s difficult to place him.
But this isn’t something the Hoops stars can take into their thinking. The Aberdeen striker already has 20 goals this season – one more than Odsonne Edouard. He has evidently found his goalscoring mojo in recent months, and provides an aerial threat too.
The likes of Kristoffer Ajer, Filip Benkovic, and Jozo Simunovic will have to be on their game if he plays. Cosgrove’s game is all about bullying defenders with his strength. Fortunately for us, however, we have the strongest defence in Scotland with just 17 goals conceded in the Premiership.
But despite Cosgrove’s tendency to flop against the Celtic, Lennon’s defence must remain switched on to keep him quiet.
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