Locking down for Celtic, Commons stamina

Kilmarnock are having a nightmare start to the season. It’s not so much that they’ve lost both games played, or the manner in which they lost, but every other team in the league has picked up points and either shown glimpses of form, or like Ross County, are feeling really good about their start to the season.

Dundee’s 0-4 humiliation of Kilmarnock on the opening day of the season found some context last night, when, before a TV audience, they played some really good football last night in Scotland’s biggest derby fixture. With this in mind, and aware that the evening’s visit of Celtic could make their four goal skelping by Dundee look modest, Gary Locke is likely to put his team into, erm, lockdown.

The challenge for Celtic tonight is simple: find your scoring touch. Three 2-0 results against Stjarnan, Ross County and Partick Thistle, and a 1-0 and 0-0 against Qarabag are great defensive scores, but only the 1-4 win in Iceland looked like a team who are in free-scoring form.

Kris Commons gave us 88 minutes on Sunday. He must have been exhausted at the end but the experience will have pushed his fitness on considerably. It’s important he uses tonight, and Saturday’s game against Inverness, to balance the requirement to increase stamina without tiring muscles for the Malmo game. Another full shift tonight and a cameo appearance at the weekend sounds like a reasonable compromise.