Glenn Gibbons: 'Bogey team' Motherwell can't be lightly dismissed

Expectations of a record 35th Scottish Cup triumph for Celtic this afternoon may be mountain high among the club's followers, but anyone who casts a punter's eye over the final will almost inevitably experience a creeping wariness about plunging on the odds-on favourites.

The principal reasons for the hesitation will be precedent and the identity of their opponents. Anyone who, for example, regards last Sunday's 4-0 squashing of Motherwell as evidence of a certain repeat against the same rivals at Hampden must already have forgotten the events of two years ago, when Celtic's 7-0 mauling of St Mirren in a home league match was followed seven days later by their elimination from the cup, on a 1-0 defeat, by the same opponents in Paisley.

But of much more concern to potential high rollers will be Motherwell's tendency to get under Celtic's skin away from Parkhead. This peculiar penchant has not yet been tested at the national stadium, but at Fir Park they have caused the Glasgow giants as much anguish in recent years as Rangers.

The last-minute defeat at Motherwell that cost Celtic the championship in 2005 is the most notorious of set-backs among the latter's fans, but it should also be noted that Stuart McCall's side could be said to have repeated the torture this season.

Their 2-0 victory over Neil Lennon's team one week after Celtic's 3-0 thrashing of Rangers in February had only to be avoided to take the title to Parkhead.

This "relationship" between two clubs is a prime example of one of football's common phenomena, the "bogey" opponent. It can endure for a number of years and play havoc with the betting man's investments. Despite not being a rarity, however, it seems not to be readily recognised by Walter Smith.

The Snake river in Idaho is probably a remote enough place to which to retreat after you have lit the blue touch paper, as the former Rangers manager demonstrated earlier this week. Smith's denunciation of Celtic as the primary cause of this season's bleakness was certain to cause uproar, but it also demonstrated what football managers have in common with politicians.

Not only do both professions offer a high public profile, but their practitioners have to be aware that their utterances in previous years can be resurrected to prove inconstancy, or even hypocrisy.

Long before Lennon became a manager, far less hinted at questionable integrity among referees, Smith willingly went on record with his naming of linesman Tom Murphy and a criticism of his competence which carried a clear implication of the official's bias against Rangers.

After Kris Boyd had a goal disallowed for offside at Fir Park (in 2008), Smith said: "Mr Murphy was quick to allow a Scott McDonald goal (against Rangers the previous season) and quick to disallow that Boyd goal. That's two away from home this season, at Aberdeen and here, that linesmen have got it wrong. And people say we're the club that never get decisions against them".As for Lennon's claim that there had not been much of a challenge to Rangers in the closing stages of this season's championship - widely interpreted as a suggestion of "lying down" by opponents sympathetic to the Ibrox cause - Smith had pre-empted that months before with the accusation last September that Aberdeen only raised their game for one fixture, against Rangers, with a clear implication that their regular roastings by Celtic showed they did not produce the same effort against the Parkhead side.

On neither of these occasions did the Rangers manager's comments lead to a national furore. Strangely, in fact, when the SFA disciplinary body investigated his condemnation of Murphy, they decreed that he had no case to answer.