Chris Sutton reckons the pressure is on Rangers at Celtic Park tomorrow.
The former Hoops frontman was in typically brilliant fashion on BT Sport’s Scottish Football Extra on Friday night, as he insisted it was a Celtic Reserves team that would take to the field at Parkhead.
Celtic are without the likes of Nir Bitton, James Forrest and Ryan Christie for the fixture, while Odsonne Edouard could also miss out.
And with all of that taken into account, the Englishman reckons the pressure is firmly on our rivals.
“This is essentially Celtic Reserves”, Sutton said alongside Darrell Currie and Ally McCoist. (18:47, BT Sport)
“And in many respects it piles more pressure on Rangers going into this fixture.
“We’ve seen this feeling before across the city. After Rangers won last time out at Celtic Park, and all the celebrations. And we saw what happened.
“They’ve shown in the past that they don’t have the stomach. They bottle it down the stretch.
“Who knows, they may bottle it again at the weekend.”
Sutton is at it, we’re still the favourites
We all love Chris Sutton. Partly because of his brilliant career on the Hoops, partly because of his wind-up nature since.
But he was surely at it when he mentioned ‘Celtic Reserves’.
Yes, we’re missing four or five first-team players. But the team Neil Lennon fields tomorrow should still be more than good enough to see off our rivals.
We’ll still have Scott Brown, Jeremie Frimpong, Callum McGregor and Shane Duffy. Kristoffer Ajer and Albian Ajeti too.
These are all potential match-winners for us.
Sutton is right about there being added pressure on Rangers though.
Many people are expecting our rivals to get a result tomorrow, given our recent form and injury/COVID issues.
Let’s hope we can shut them up. Just like we’ve done in the first derby in each of the last four seasons.
In other news, Neil Lennon was asked about the prospect of Diego Laxalt starting tomorrow
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