Former Celtic striker and current Sky Sports pundit Charlie Nicholas has praised Celtic’s mental-strength over arch-rivals Rangers.
As transfer deadline-day rolls on, Celtic have still to bring in a single player. Work was done earlier in the window when we brought in Patryk Klimala and Ismaila Soro. However, sections of the support still want more.
If we don’t sign anyone, of course, Celtic are still top of the Scottish Premiership tree by five points. The Hoops’ psychological strength over the course of the last three-and-a-half years has been key to our winning of 10 domestic trophies in-a-row.
And even though Rangers are gearing up for the second half of the season, Nicholas said on Sky Sports that Celtic’s mentality has been “absolutely unbelievable”.
“You want the points on the board. Celtic’s mentality over the years has been absolutely unbelievable, and Rangers are starting to find that’s a problem for them.
“They start off first tomorrow. They can close the gap to two points, and we’ll see how Celtic do on the live game on Sunday.”
Mentality can’t be used as an excuse not to bring players in
It’s great hearing about our mental strength being bigged up, and there’s massive truth to it. You don’t win 10 competitions in-a-row if you don’t have a strong mentality about your squad. The Betfred Cup final was a key example of Celtic digging deep to pull another win out the hat.
But at the same time, this can’t be used as some sort of excuse to not bother making signings in key areas. Mentality will only take you so far – depth is just as important in the long-run.
The Celtic board might want to take that into consideration today as we await our first signing of deadline-day (and likely our only one).
What has been impressive is how the summer signings have picked up that mentality so quickly. The likes of Christopher Jullien and Jeremie Frimpong are the standouts in that regard. Hatem Elhamed was another have a successful start to his Celtic career before his injury.
Yet there were times even under Brendan Rodgers when there was a strong mentality yet the football got stale. That’s what we should be looking to avoid in order to provide supporters the best product Celtic possibly can as a club.
It could be the difference between not just winning the league or treble, but saving our holy grail of 10-in-a-row.
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