Celtic attacker James Forest has admitted that a poor performance by the Hoops against Rangers last season inspired the team to push on to win eight in a row.
This time last year Celtic travelled to Ibrox to take on Rangers, and slumped to a 1-o loss. Thankfully after the winter break the Hoops recovered and ended up winning the club’s eighth league title in a row.
Ahead of Celtic’s game against Rangers on Sunday, Forrest has been reflecting on Celtic’s performance on the day and the aftermath, and how it compares to how Celtic are playing at the moment.
“Everyone was still feeling it”
“Obviously last year, we went into the break having been beaten off Rangers. For weeks, everyone was still feeling it. So everyone will want to change that this year” he said, as reported by the Herald.
“We obviously came back and had a really good run. That defeat was maybe a factor – it did hurt after that game. But we’ve won 11 games in the league now, so we couldn’t be in better form” Forrest concluded.
Hoops had series of injury issues on the day
Celtic had a series of injury issues against Rangers on that day, which led to Mikey Johnston playing up-front and Callum McGregor playing at left-back. Thankfully the Hoops have no such worries this time, and should be confident of victory.
It is interesting to note that even though the Celtic team of last season had won it all in the domestic game, they still felt the hurt of defeat. That shows the will to win that has been a hallmark of the current squad of players, no matter who the manager is.
Thankfully the current squad of players doesn’t know what it is like to lose that many Glasgow derbies. Hopefully that continues to be the case for the foreseeable future, starting with Sunday’s game at Celtic Park.
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
