When Ange Postecoglou was making his emotional post-match speech to an adoring crowd on the day Celtic lifted the league trophy in May, he mentioned a fashion accessory.
The manager thanked the Celtic fans for embracing him, his family and, pointing to what he was wearing: “This jumper.” That garment had become the most revered article of clothing in Scottish football since Walter Smith’s cardigan was the definition of power dressing inside Ibrox at the start of the Millennium.
Or Fergus McCann’s bunnet during the period when he first of all rescued, then resurrected, Celtic in the last years of the 20th century. Now Ange appears to have ditched the jumper in favour of a shiny new tracksuit. For a day at least. And that’s because he’s clearly not the type of man given to superstition or anything else that isn’t based on hard-bitten reality. It wasn’t the label inside the back of his jumper that won Celtic the league title last season.
It was the team on the park who excelled and went 32 league games on the bounce without defeat on the way to providing the flag that will be run up the pole at Celtic Park today. Ange is a cool head in a fevered environment and he’ll need to show that again from kick-off against Aberdeen.
When the CEO of the SPFL, Neil Doncaster, is making pre-emptive strikes on the subject of crowd disorder and publicly threatening the punishments that will accompany any breaches of the peace, you get the feeling intelligence has reached him that this season has the capacity for boiling over.
Rangers made their start in pursuit of the title. Celtic will give their response on Sunday against a background where apoplexy will take on the proportions of an epidemic among rival fans. A draw will no longer be considered a disaster. It’ll be construed as a cataclysmic shift in the earth’s axis. A defeat has also been upgraded in severity from a catastrophe to being tantamount to the end of the world as we know it.
But Ange has got too much to be getting on with to be bothered by any of that nonsense. Rangers have, financially speaking, gone from self-harm towards self-sustainability on the back of having sold players for big money and signed significant replacements while making a handsome profit at the same time.
Alfredo Morelos is now likely to sign a contract extension that will rule out any chance of making a killing on him at any time in the near future. A move that can only be as a consequence of Giovanni van Bronckhorst believing the Colombian’s goals are beyond price for Rangers.
What Postecoglou has also to bear in mind is that it was Aberdeen manager Jim Goodwin who provided one of the most awkward games for Celtic on the way to the title. That was the night he was in charge of St Mirren and had to field a team of kids against Celtic because of the ravages of Covid-19 were so great the club considered forfeiting the points and cancelling the fixture altogether.
But they persevered and got a draw, proving the guy’s resourcefulness. Comparing any Pittodrie manager to Alex Ferguson would be to invite ridicule. Aberdeen have won one trophy in the last 30 years. They USED to be famous. But, since taking over midway through last season, Jim’s taken a flamethrower to the place in the manner of Furious Fergie back in the day.
And, unlike Hibs’ owner Ron Gordon, he’s not complaining about the order in which his club’s fixtures have fallen.
Jim’s relishing the chance to go to Celtic Park on the day the flag’s unfurled because he knows the psychological lift that would come with the Dons then raining on Celtic’s parade.
Ange’s jumper might have been consigned to the laundry basket of history. Whatever, a new page gets turned today.
