This weekend, Celtic will play Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup, which will provide a pleasant diversion from the stress of the Scottish Premiership.
Brendan Rodgers is still on track to win both the league and the cup despite being in the heart of a fierce title fight.
However, the Celtic manager must first defeat Aberdeen at Hampden this Saturday. With Jimmy Thelin taking over as The Dons’ new manager, the 12:30 p.m. kickoff is expected to be a fierce test.
So the Pittodrie side have every reason to go into the fixture with confidence now despite their poor league form but it doesn’t mean they can rewrite history from the last 1-1 Pittodrie draw.
Clarkson says Aberdeen ‘should have’ beaten Celtic
I won’t dispute that the Pittodrie draw was a tightly-knit group. However, it appears like Leighton Clarkson has overlooked several important details regarding the game.
Clarkson stated [Press & Journal], “We played really well against Celtic that day, so we should have won that game.”
“Of course, they are a really good team and you do have to nullify them.
“You also need stages in the game when you have to keep the ball off them and make them run a bit.
“On the day we will have a game plan and set-up that will be successful.
“Rangers and Celtic are two really good teams as they’ve proved in Europe and all season in the league.
“But we have gone to Ibrox and won and should have beaten Celtic at Pittodrie with the chances we had at the end.
“We do go into every game knowing that we can win.”
Despite dominating the opening half, Celtic wasted possession. But before Nicolas Kuhn equalised in the 63rd, Bojan Miovski gave Aberdeen the lead in the 50th.
Granted, Aberdeen had their opportunities, but let’s not overlook the fact that Celtic was subpar and the match statistics still indicate that we were superior.
Compared to the home team’s seven shots on goal, Celtic had 22 and 70.8% of the play. Four of the Hoops’ shots were on target, nine of them were blocked, and three of them were saved. We also wasted nine corners that we had. [Sky Sports]
We would not have been able to be seen if Celtic had been wearing their shooting boots. Not to be overlooked are the fact that Stephen Welsh and Matt O’Riley each had opportunities to win the game in the closing moments.
As I mentioned earlier, it was a close game, but let’s not act as though Aberdeen ought to have prevailed when Celtic was clearly the stronger team.
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