Celtic playing Ross County at home is hardly the kind of fixture you look at on the schedule and worry about. All things going well tomorrow, on paper, Celtic should comfortably take care of the Staggies.
We beat them convincingly 3-0 at this venue last time, of course.
Yet Scottish football, as we know, is an unpredictable beast and the worst thing anyone at Celtic can do tomorrow from the players to the supporters is take the three points for granted.
The truth is, County are one of the in-form teams in the country right now and actually have a sound case for being considered ‘best of the rest’ at this moment.
Over the last 20 games, they lead everyone else in the division, apart from Celtic and Rangers, when it comes to points.
That’s been driven by an impressive four victories from their last six. They’ve only been beaten once in their last eight matches, picking up a draw against Rangers at the end of January.
Obviously Celtic are red hot favourites to win tomorrow’s encounter, I’m not trying to big County up too much. It’s just important to realise that they have an offensive threat and will be coming to Parkhead to make a statement.
Ange Postecoglou will be drilling this message into his players. We know that. Postecoglou doesn’t mess about when it comes to attitude and the intensity he wants from his starting team.
However, we also know that message doesn’t always get through. Sometimes the Celtic performance does come across as a bit passive. Sometimes that intensity isn’t there.
Some matches at Celtic Park in the Premiership this season have been a perfect example of that – the 3-2 victory over Dundee, the late win over United, a 0-0 against Livingston. Fixtures that looked like a bankable three points but were much more of a slog than we expected, in part because of the way Celtic started these encounters.
In a football sense, we need to go for their throats for the off and be prepared for a battle akin to the Tony Macaroni Arena or Tannadice on Monday.
The players have to be up for this one, there is simply too much at stake. This can’t be seen as a routine encounter ahead of the international break.
In other news, Ange Postecoglou’s latest stern Celtic response to a Scottish media that just aren’t learning.
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