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Martin O'Neill went public about having to beat 3 Rangers teams now it's Celtic who deal in multiples
Martin O’Neill has never been short of one-liners over the years and there’s one he’s often used when it comes to describing the scale of the task he faced when he arrived at Celtic in the summer of 2000.
The Northern Irishman says he didn’t have to just beat one Rangers team – he had to overcome three of them. Back then it didn’t go unnoticed by O’Neill that the talk when he took charge was then Gers boss Dick Advocaat having so much talent at his disposal he had one side for Europe, another for the domestic league and a third one for the cups.
It didn’t quite work out that way as his Celtic outfit came out on top regardless of who Rangers put out that season – and it’s a line that ended up in the same drawer as Sir David Murray’s ‘for every fiver’ nugget. And yet, it’s one of those soundbites that come to mind right now... but this time regarding Celtic.
Brendan Rodgers’ team are flying right now. They’ve been slick all season but in the last week they seem to have gone up another gear with Aberdeen getting slapped around Hampden last Saturday and then RB Leipzig given a Champions League chasing.
But they are about to head into a period that will really show just how good this Celtic squad – and we mean squad – really are. Winter is coming and it’s roll the sleeves up time as the workload is about to get extremely tough.
Once Sunday's clash at Kilmarnock and the latest international break is out of the way, the Hoops are going to face 10 games in just 36 days before the Old Firm clash at Ibrox on January 2. Go right through until the start of February and it’s 20 matches in 88 days, so it will still be a game every four-and-a-bit days for three months.
That’s enough to put strain on any squad and there’s every chance we could see Rangers and Hearts severely creaking over this spell too. This is where strength in depth will really matter and we’ll find out just how good some of these fringe men are at Parkhead.
There will also be difficult choices for Rodgers, along with Philippe Clement at Ibrox and Neil Critchley at Tynecastle. Unlike those other two, the Celtic manager has a buffer zone to allow him to prioritise.
The Premiership title always has to be the ultimate ambition and an Old Firm Premier Sports Cup Final is no place for mucking about. But the rest of the time? The league stuff should practically be stuck on the back burner. Rodgers will need to rotate more than some on Strictly Come Dancing because it’s the big stage that really matters right now rather than the domestic dance floor.
Celtic have got themselves into a super position in the Champions League. They are arguably four points ahead of where most folk would have expected them to be at this stage.
But the job is not done yet. Club Brugge have shown they are more than decent and Dinamo Zagreb’s recovery from their nine-goal shocker against Bayern Munich has been every bit as impressive as Celtic’s comeback from the Borussia Dortmund bashing.
They can’t let it go to waste now. Sticking a few more wins on the board could get them all the way to the knockout stages and maybe even by bypassing the play-off stage, even if they might be a flight of fancy too far. Regardless, Rodgers needs to keep all his big guns as fresh as possible for the European games and allow some of his other players to prove they are worthy of being Celtic players in some of the rest.
A fair few of them will get a chance at Rugby Park today and there can’t be a need to be bailed out by the key men again if it’s not going to plan. Europe has to be the main goal, especially with the coefficient needing a major boost to get back to automatic places down the line.
Everyone knows Celts have plenty of money in the bank but it’s time for Rodgers to tap into his reserves and see if that old Advocaat line can apply to his squad.
