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.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel