It’s been a great few days for Celtic. They picked up six points from their last two matches against Motherwell and St. Johnstone, scored eight goals, and kept two clean sheets. Thus, they should be confident heading into their Ibrox trip this midweek to face the Rangers in the first Glasgow Derby of 2025.
A Glasgow Derby is always exciting and something to look forward to. This week is no different, other than it’s perhaps less vital than usual.
Celtic fans will always want to win these matches, that remains important. But whatever the result on Thursday, the champions will remain at least 11 points ahead in the league, and possibly as many as 17.
That lead comes from Celtic's excellent performances and results in the league. It’s also partly due to their close rivals struggling to find any sort of rhythm.
James Tavernier shares 'masterplan' to face Celtic
Rangers followed up their Boxing Day defeat at St Mirren with a 2-2 draw at Motherwell, after trailing by two goals at halftime. That’s left their fans unhappy, their manager Philippe Clement looking somewhat bewildered in his media comments, and of course has disappointed their Hall of Fame captain James Tavernier, again.
There’s lots of change in the background personnel at Rangers as board members and executives come and go. It looks as though there is a gap in their media support for the manager and players too.
Now, we have Tavernier sharing his masterplan ahead of Celtic's visit to Ibrox. As reported by the Daily Record, he said:
"It's an Old Firm, against our biggest rivals in a home game. So we have to go back to what we were doing better at, before these two games, and that's play better as a team, the performance of the team, defend as a team and be clinical. Its points that we're obviously not happy about, and we're just going to push all the way to the end of the season.
"We were unlucky in the final, going all the way to extra time. So we're just going to go into that game, and we obviously need to address what we need to do before Thursday, and really look at ourselves as men, as a team, to put things right."
Play better, score more, concede less. Tavernier's not gone for the formation, style of play, or other tactical surprises there, has he? The news that he will be missing the match with an injury probably wasn't part of his plan either.
Of course, there was no guarantee that Clement would select Tavernier anyway. Especially with Daizen Maeda having been rested for the first part of Sunday's game and scoring when he did get on the pitch.
Brendan Rodgers has got his side playing well again. He’s shown the squad strength in midfield in recent matches. In addition to the 14-point lead over the Rangers, the Celtic goal difference is better by 30 goals. Tavernier may have a plan, but the likelihood is that the Hoops will have a much better one.