The first week of the Scottish season is over. Combined with European play, how threatening is Celtic?
This is going to be a weekly feature, simply to look at how dangerous Celtic is at any given time.
Between European play and their opening weekend match against St. Johnstone, in competitive matches this season Celtic are 5-0 with most victories being in utterly dominant fashion.
Celtic dispatched their first European competition 5-2 on aggregate, with the home-leg 2-1 victory being the closest result of the early season. But they turned around from that and gave Kalju FC a 5-0 pumping at Park Head in the first leg of the next European tie.
Celtic would then go on the road to win 2-0 for a 7-0 aggregate victory.
Then came this past Saturday where Celtic hosted St. Johnstone and slaughtered them 7-0 with a hattrick for Ryan Christie.
To put it simply, Celtic have looked in great form so far, to the point that it doesn’t exactly build confidence in Rangers hopes to chase for the title this season. As much as Rangers proved last season that they have what it takes to compete with this squad, Celtic still has nearly double the payroll of Rangers. Last season Celtic under-performed and still won the league by 9 points.
The good news is that Celtic haven’t exactly played world-beaters so far. Sarajevo is a strong club and while Celtic handled them it wasn’t as scary with the 5-2 aggregate and Kalju was clearly overmatched.
In this past weekend’s match, St. Johnstone has been a mostly decent side for the last several seasons but have been trending down. To make it worse, they lost a number of players this past Summer and made few additions, while relegation isn’t likely to be in their season, this is almost certainly a far cry from the side that finished 4th in back to back seasons.
Combine that with it being the home opener and flag-day and it makes sense that Celtic would be all the way on their game over a much inferior opponent.
Celtic’s next European tie against Romanian club CFR Cluj should be a real test for Celtic. Supposedly Cluj is a very strong side with Chinese money behind the team, although I guess one of their better players is hurt. While Celtic is likely to still advance if they dominate Cluj like they have everyone else it may be time to really start worrying about the chances of any other club in Scotland.
That said, it’s a long season and it is early. Rangers face Celtic for the first time early on, but there is plenty of time for things to change.
THREAT LEVEL: Going fishing and seeing a shark in the water.
It’s definitely a shark. It’s too far away to tell what sort of shark it is or how big it is, but it’s definitely a shark. You know there are sharks in these waters sometimes, you’ve seen sharks before, they are mostly harmless and you’re in a boat. But as the shark circles your boat you become increasingly aware of how far from shore you are, and even if you won’t let on to your mates, you wish your boat was a little bigger. That shark isn’t going to hurt you, everything is safe for now, but you can’t ignore it.