BIG PHIL insists he welcomes the prospect of going toe to toe with Brendan Rodgers’ champions in the Premier Sports League Cup Final next month.
What next? Turkeys voting for Christmas?
There is more of a hint of bravado and brouhaha from the Belgian who dodged a bullet at Hampden yesterday.
Am I the only one can see that the comeback 2-1 win over Motherwell may merely be a stay of execution for Philippe Clement? For 45 minutes against the Fir Park side, he teetered on the brink of oblivion as the pressure piled up and the Follow Follow brigade worked themselves into a ferment.
NET LOSS OR NET GAIN? Philippe Clement at the end of the 2-1 win over Motherwell at Hampden.
Boos and jeers greeted the half-time whistle as Phil and his players beat a hasty retreat to the sanctuary of the dressing room. To be fair, they responded against a Fir Park side, mystifyingly feeble after the turnaround, and got the job done to book a place at the national stadium on December 15.
The stone-faced Govan gaffer reckons it’s “a good thing” that his team are playing Celtic for the honour of lifting the first trophy of the domestic campaign.
Coincidentally, the Glasgow teams will lock horns again a mere 18 days later at Ibrox in the Premiership to welcome in a new year.
In their only meeting so far this season, Rodgers’ side clobbered their neighbours 3-0 at Parkhead.
You have to admire the cojones of Clement if he genuinely relishes the prospect of playing a Celtic team that mercilessly decimated an Aberdeen side that had gone 16 games unbeaten up until they were hit by Rodgers’ juggernaut on Saturday.
THE WAY AHEAD…Brendan Rodgers sends instructions to his players during the 6-0 win over Aberdeen.
That’s the same Aberdeen who inflicted a 2-1 defeat on the Ibrox club just last Wednesday to ease nine points ahead of Big Phil’s faltering collection of individuals after only 10 league games.
It’s bad enough for Ibrox fans to view their team trailing the champions by such an amount, but they cannot accept that a ‘provincial’ club such as the Pittodrie side can be heading out of sight before the turn of the year.
Big Phil will undoubtedly produce some banal and bewildering offerings on the countdown to Hampden. You have to wonder how his head works.
After the pummelling in Paradise at the beginning of September, the manager talked up his team’s performance in the first 10 minutes and seemed to ignore the remaining 80 minutes-plus in which the hosts stuck the ball behind Jack Butland three times.
In fact, it was four, but another was chalked off in dodgy VAR circumstances while the normally-reliable Reo Hatate and Kyogo Furuhashi blew two sitters.
Phil also gibbered on about two wonderful opportunities for his players to score goals in that brief opening period forgetting somehow that the players in question, Cyriel Dessers and Rabbi Matondo, were offside. VAR would have had no option but to concur.
TWO ON THE TOUCHLINE…Brendan Rodgers and Philippe Clement during Celtic’s 1-0 Scottish Cup Final success on May 25 to seal the league and Cup double.
The expressionless Belgian does come out with some tortured statements that leave your humble scribe just a tad perplexed.
As he prepared for the match in the east end of Glasgow, Phil talked up his team’s chances of success at the home of the champions by making a bizarre reference to his side’s 6-0 win over Ross County the previous weekend.
Quite categorically, he asserted it had been the club’s “best result in four years”.
Did no-one mention the fact that the Dingwall club had been ejected from the League Cup seven days earlier by the minnows of Spartans?
For just over six weeks until kick-off at Hampden, we can now sit back and attempt to decipher some of the dross that will be delivered by Big Phil.
Presuming, of course, he is still the manager at Ibrox by the time December 15 rolls around.
ALEX GORDON
‘A GOOD THING,’ BIG PHIL READY FOR CELTIC BATTLE
