ERNEST Shackleton was out searching for the South Pole on New Year’s Day 1909, the day when Celtic last recorded five successive wins at Ibrox.

The Parkhead side’s 3-1 win in Govan that day pales into insignificance alongside the Scottish Cup final between the two teams later that year – the cup was eventually withheld after the replayed final which ended in a draw descended into rioting ostensibly over an unfulfilled expectation of extra time – but the milestone recorded by Willie Maley and his men is still worth marking as Brendan Rodgers’ side cross the city aiming to repeat the feat almost 110 years later.

While this is the first time Rodgers will have gone head-to-head with his former Liverpool colleague Steven Gerrard on home turf, not to mention with the away fans limited just 750, but the series to date includes a 2-1 win against Mark Warburton’s team in December 2016, 5-1 and 2-0 triumphs over Pedro Caixinha and a 3-2 win with ten men in March against Graeme Murty.

Scott Sinclair has played no small part in racking up this record. Part of the matchday squad for all four of them, the Englishman notched two Ibrox goals in his first season at the club, but couldn’t get back on the scoresheet last season. Having passed a personal milestone on Wednesday, smashing the 50-mark in terms of goals as a Celtic player as he scored his second hat-trick for the club against Aberdeen, what better time to get back amongst the goals than this Saturday?

“I was aware that I was near the 50-goal mark for Celtic and it’s a great achievement for myself to get over the mark,” said Sinclair. “Hopefully, I can keep on scoring.

“My last hat-trick was against Hearts in my first season after a I first arrived to clinch the title,” he added. “So it seemed like a long time ago and it was great to do it again. I want to build on that.

“Personally, you can’t do much better than score a hat-trick when it comes to your own confidence going into the next game. As a team, we’re all in good spirits in the camp and we are all going to be ready for the weekend game.

“The big occasions are exciting. It’s like that for a player to be involved in these type of games.

“We have got some good memories [of Ibrox], but this is another game and we go into it the way we would against anyone else. I’m sure it’ll be a little bit different in terms of the crowd. But, for us as players and professionals, we get our heads down and forget about things like that. We just try to make sure that we play good football.”

If it was a bit of a mixed bag from Celtic at Pittodrie – at times in the first period they were sloppy with their passing out from the back – the return of Odsonne Edouard from injury is timely ahead of the visit to Govan.

“The manager always works on certain things. We didn’t have a striker at Pittodrie, so Ryan [Christie] went up top and played a false nine. He did really well and then Odsonne came back fully fit and made a great impact when he went onto the pitch.”