Celtic know cup win could come at Rangers cost - but that won't stop them

Success in Sunday’s Scottish Cup semi-final against Aberdeen would come at a price for Celtic.

Celtic Manager Neil Lennon lifts the 2019 Scottish Cup (Photo by SNS Group/Craig Foy)

It is one that Neil Lennon has no doubts his players are willing to pay to extend a remarkable run. If the holders were to secure a 35th straight cup success at Hampden this weekend, it would mean the postponement of their Premiership encounter against Livingston on December 20 – the date of the final for a competition held over from last season because of the Covid-19 lockdown.

As a result, it would leave Celtic with no opportunity to catch-up on the three league games fewer than Rangers they would have played before the next derby on January 2. In their ten-in-a-row chasing season, that could mean dealing with the huge pressure of a sizeable points deficit on their title rivals until well into next year … even if they were to have faultless league form.

“We just want to keep winning,” said Lennon. “We’ll deal with that if and when the time comes. I think the players would like that as well. They don’t want to give anything up. There is a trophy on the line and they want to defend it as vigorously as possible. If that means playing games further down the line then I think that’s what the players would want.

“As this one will be the first at Hampden without a crowd, so it will be different, but the premise is the game. We’d dearly love to win. Aberdeen have won a lot of games this season, they gave us a real challenge last weekend [in the 3-3 draw] and we expect the semi-final to be pretty similar.”

In a wider context, what goes on the line against Derek McInnes’ men is Celtic’s hopes of clinching a fourth straight title. Entirely unprecedented yet what has been achieved by the players at Parkhead since 2016 is in danger of being taken for granted. “I totally agree,” said Lennon. “These players should be given that respect. We’ll never see it again, I don’t think.”

The Celtic manager believes it was the correct decision not to allow the global pandemic to end his club’s trophy roll through scrapping last year’s Scottish Cup when the league season was curtailed.

“I think they were hoping that by this stage we’d have crowds in,” he said. “I think that was the whole reasoning behind pushing the games down the line. That hasn’t been the case, so what do you do? You have to try and complete it and then move onto the next one.

“I think the four left in the competition would have all wanted it to be finished having earned the right to be there. It’s now up for grabs. We all have the chance of winning a bit of silverware which would be brilliant. It would be brilliant for the other clubs but ultimately fantastic for us.

“It would have been strange had we not been able to finish the competition but then nothing is normal about what we’re all going through. It is not normal and it’s challenging. But hopefully we can get the games played and get the trophy settled one way or the other. We can then put last season to bed and everyone can focus on this season.”

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