FIRED-UP FORREST

JAMES FORREST can’t wait for the international break to pass to get back into the thick of the action.

The international winger looked a bit more like his old self in the 4-1 win over Ross County at rain-lashed Dingwall at the weekend.

Forrest emphasised the importance of the victory in the Highlands against dangerous opponents, especially on a treacherous night on a tight pitch.

Celtic had to produce answers after the dreadful 2-1 Europa League defeat from Molde at Parkhead on the Thursday night. Equally, it was crucial for the team to pick up three points and maintain a six-point advantage over the pursuing Hearts, who had made no mistake in beating Hamilton 2-0 at Tynecastle the previous day.

In the end, it was a comfortable triumph for the team chasing their fifth successive SPFL championship. Goals from Leigh Griffiths (2), Tom Rogic and Nir Bitton made certain of no slip-ups on a tricky surface.

And Forrest, sparking in the second-half with his driving runs and intelligent play, more than played his part.

He said: “It’s always a hard game up there and they’ve been playing well this season, so it was good to get the three points and score a few goals, as well.“Attacking-wise, right from the start, we were strong and our movement was good. We scored four goals and it could have been more.“They had the wind behind them in the second-half, but we came out strongly and scored a couple of goal early on and it was a good performance from start to finish.

“If they sit back, you need to have movement and we’ve got players who can do that and we managed to hurt them.”

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Don’t forget that CQN new book, THE WINDS OF CHANGE is published next week. This is the continuing story of managing Celtic after Jock Stein and after looking at Billy McNeill and Davie Hay’s times as manager (from 1978-1991) in Caesar & The Assassin (available HERE), we now move the story forward and start in 1991 when Liam Brady got the Celtic job.

THE WINDS OF CHANGE takes us through eight occupants of the Celtic hot-seat, seven managers and Kenny Dalglish, who stood in as caretaker after John Barnes was sacked. We end The Winds of Change at the Cup Final in 2005, which was a low profile affair after the events the previous week at Motherwell.

Well actually that isn’t quite correct. Paul at the last minute, wrote the final page for THE WINDS OF CHANGE, to note the judgement from the Court of Session on November 4, 2015. Celtic’s story in the period of THE WINDS OF CHANGE was clearly distorted by the use of an unlawful tax scheme by their then biggest rivals which allowed that football club to field players that they would not otherwise have been able to afford.

This makes the Celtic achievements, documented in great detail in THE WINDS OF CHANGE, even more remarkable.

This is the second book in our trilogy and this time next year we will be featuring Gordon Strachan, Tony Mowbray, Neil Lennon and Ronny Deila’s first few years as Celtic manager as we bring the story up to date. Any suggestions for a title for this third book?

You will be able to order THE WINDS OF CHANGE from the new look version of CQN Bookstore which should be ready in the next few days.