Dundee United striker Nicky Clark has lauded Celtic for their improvement under Ange Postecoglou this season.
United will host Celtic at Tannadice tonight in what’s looking like a mouth-watering Scottish Cup tie in the City of Discovery. The Hoops have won 2 of their 3 meetings with United this season, including a convincing 3-0 success away from home back in December.
The Arabs did manage to take 2 points off the Hoops back in September. However, even back then, it was a different Celtic team to the one they’ll face tonight. A Celtic side with so many matchwinners and that is not reliant anymore on the goals of Kyogo Furuhashi.
And Clark, to his credit, has come out and acknowledged Celtic’s improvement ahead of tonight’s game. As quoted by the Daily Record, the former Rangers striker said: “Celtic have improved massively this season as it’s gone on. When we played them at Parkhead we did well and got a point, but they blew us away when they came to Tannadice.
“We were a bit off it and couldn’t get near them. Credit to them, they were brilliant that day. They come out and try to swamp you. We need to be at it right from the start. That was the biggest problem with the Tannadice game because we never started well enough. We tried to get back into it but we left ourselves with too much to do. ‘We need to be at it, stay in the game and then take our chances when we get them.
“If we stick to the game plan we know our fitness levels are very good and if we are bang at it then we will give ourselves a good chance. “We know it’ll be difficult but we’ve done well against them and we know we can do it again.”
Dundee United vs Celtic – another chance to lay out a statement of intent
Many eyes will be on Celtic tonight. A lot of them will be tuning in hoping that we slip up and make the pathway to the cup much more straightforward for their own respective clubs.
But that appears to be the kind of environment Celtic thrive in. When there are eyes on them of those wishing nothing but failure, that’s when we tend to turn up and produce our best football. Look at last week’s win over Livingston for example.
You do fear this will be anything but routine tonight. This is United’s only chance at silverware this season. They’ve thrown pressure onto themselves by giving their supporters more tickets for the game tonight too. They’ll know that they have to, at the very least, put up a strong, competitive fight.
Thankfully, Celtic come into this one having not played a game in 8 days. A sustained break will hopefully have done the players a power of good.
Whether this will be reminiscent of the 3-0 Tannadice success of December remains to be seen. But just getting through the tie in any manner would be a success. It’s not the draw you would’ve selected beforehand, so it’s imperative we progress to keep the treble dream alive.
There’s expectancy on these Celtic players. But the truth is they’ve dealt with that tremendously over the course of the season so far.
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