Hubble Bubble Toil and Trouble

At the risk of me breaking into prose, our previewer has succumbed to a suggestion from Yngwie that William Shakespeare would be an interesting delivery for the match preview at Parkhead.  I'm not sure what substances he was taking, or was it possibly just his medication, but Maryhill likes a challenge, and he has made a stab at McBeth..........sorry, maybe not the most appropriate turn of phrase.

Hark, is that thunder I hear....................Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd......................

So, here goes, a preview in the fashion of Bill Shakespeare and picture this scene......................

I Dreamed a Dream...

A pale winter dawn breaks over a grey wasteland in the East End of Glasgow. Faint in the distance is the melancholy jangle of an ice-cream van perpetually doing its rounds. A mangy ginger tom cat with an unlit firework tied to its tail limps among the discarded buckfast bottles. As our eyes adjust to the unearthly scene, we become aware of three WEIRD SISTERS. They are sulkily throwing small, unidentifiable objects into half an oil-drum; occasionally they stop and break into the Slosh. Drawing closer, we see that beneath the pointed hoods of their thin Kappa tracksuits their faces are drawn and wan, but their eyes burn with a fierce, mad light; and, drawing closer still, we can just make out the strange incantations they are muttering:

...Eye of linesman, Toe of hun, And at last our spell is done.

Hebble, pebble, songs of rebel, Now the hoops will win the treble!

The WEIRD SISTERS cackle hellishly. In the middle distance, but approaching at speed, is a jaunty ginger figure in a top-of-the-range black Kappa tracksuit. It is MACLENNON.

MACLENNON: All right girls, what about yis?

FIRST WEIRD SISTER: All hail MacLennon, hail to thee, Thane of Garthamlock.

SECOND WEIRD SISTER: All hail MacLennon, hail to thee, Thane of Cranhill.

THIRD WEIRD SISTER: All hail, MacLennon, that shalt be King hereafter.

MACLENNON: King? That sounds magic! But hang on, won’t those ***** at the SFA have something to say about that?...

All gaze into the half oil-drum. Their leering expressions are reflected briefly on the surface of the bubbling liquid within, then as it begins to churn and swirl faster and faster, the faces dissolve and... Oh. I’ve woken up.

A strange dream, perhaps, but surely not any stranger than the last few weeks of almost hallucinatory bizarreness in the life of Celtic Football Club. In quick succession we have had penaltygate, liegate, refgate, poppygate, ballboygate, emailgate, and just this morning, it was reported that all the molehills in vicinity of Celtic Park were being raised to Munro status. Life in and around Kerrydale Street constantly seems to mimic the plot of a soap opera, such as (to pick one at random) Dallas. In the midst of all this, you would be forgiven for thinking that Celtic had imploded into a mess of Mowbrayesque proportions and were searching for excuses, but in fact they had a 100% league record under Neil Lennon when all this started (during a game which they subsequently won), and it is only since then that their form has started to look a little shaky. All the same, Inverness Caledonian Thistle are going to have to be at the top of their game if they are to extend their unbeaten away run beyond a calendar year at Celtic Park on Saturday.

Inspiration from the past?

In a previous match preview, I noted that despite Caley Thistle having first come to the wider public attention with a famous Scottish Cup victory over Celtic, the Inverness team’s league record against the green half of Glasgow is poorer than against any other side it has faced. To recap: of the sixteen SPL matches between the sides, Celtic have won twelve and Caley Thistle only one, with three having been drawn. This underlines the size of the task facing Terry Butcher’s team when it runs out on Saturday, and with ICT’s last journey to Celtic Park having finished in a 6-0 cup defeat, albeit with a weakened team, the Celtic players are bound to feel confident that they are capable of beating Butcher’s men. Yet upsets do happen: just look back at 16th December 2007.

Celtic went into this game with a two point advantage over Rangers at the top of the SPL, and although Caley Thistle were on a fine three-game winning run after recovering from a terrible start to the season, few expected them to take anything from this fixture. These fears seemed to be confirmed when Celtic went 2-0 up inside the first half hour with a quick double from Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Arguably, though, these goals had come against the run of play, and the ICT players did not allow their heads to go down. Don Cowie and Marius Niculae in particular had among their finest games for Caley Thistle that afternoon, and it was Niculae who was brought down in the box by Steven Pressley three minutes before half time to allow ICT the opportunity to get back into the game. John Rankin thumped the ball home past ex-Caley Thistle goalkeeper Mark Brown. Despite Vennegoor of Hesselink hitting the post soon after the break, the Inverness players again took the game to Celtic and were rewarded in 57 minutes when David Proctor outjumped the Celtic defence to nod home Don Cowie’s corner. Scott McDonald had a goal correctly chopped off for offside immediately after the restart, but just three minutes after that, Caley Thistle scored the winner, when Don Cowie ran onto a long ball from Richard Hastings that Stephen McManus had failed to control, and calmly prodded it past Brown. When David Proctor was sent off on 68 minutes for a last-man challenge on Scott McDonald, the ICT supporters knew they were in a for a long last twenty minutes, but the Caley Thistle players defended heroically under relentless Celtic pressure and held on for what remains our only league win against Celtic to date.

Looking at the two line-ups from that game today, it would have to be conceded that Celtic are probably stronger in several areas of the pitch now than they were then, and as their last-gasp winner against St Mirren showed recently, they will never allow their heads to go down. Yet despite the talent that existed in that Caley Thistle side, I would argue that Terry Butcher’s current model has a greater spirit and equal ability, and if the likes of Hayes, Foran, Rooney and Odhiambo all hit form at the same time, our unbeaten run could be extended for a wee while yet.

Current form and team news

It is a mark of the tremendous run that Inverness have been on that the www.scotprem.com website’s ‘current form’ table, based on the last six results, has Caley Thistle second only to Hearts, ahead of Rangers by virtue of having scored a goal more and of Celtic by winning three points more over the same period. Two seasons ago, the debate among the ICT support was all about whether changing personnel could make a losing team any better; today, it is about whether Terry Butcher dare change a winning team to suit different opponents or give players who have done nothing wrong this season their chance. Such is the competition for places this season that Eric Odhiambo, one of our most effective players in the early part of the season, cannot get into the starting line-up. The manager’s biggest decision come the weekend will likely be whether or not to reinstate Kevin McCann, who missed the Hibs game due to the terms of his loan agreement, or to continue with Stuart Duff at right back and Russell Duncan and Lee Cox in central midfield. Obviously the team has potential limitations – many ICT supporters would agree that Ross Tokely, previously mostly employed as a stopgap at centre half, and the youngster Graeme Shinnie have exceeded expectations this season and that they will face a particularly stern test against Celtic. Yet even those supporters of other teams who have dismissed ICT’s early form as a ‘promotion bounce’ must now be starting to concede that there is a genuinely good team in place here.

Browsing through a few of the Celtic supporters’ forums, it becomes clear that there is a growing feeling that something is not quite right with the current Celtic team. On paper, the depth of squad and quality of player available seem to exceed those of any other SPL club, Rangers included. However, many supporters feel that the central defence is shaky; that the midfield lacks strength and has not gelled; that the available strikers, Gary Hooper excepted, are not up to the job; and that Neil Lennon is failing to make the right substitutions at the right times. Lennon’s signing Daniel Majstorovic seems to have been exempted from most of the criticism of the defence, but both Glenn Loovens and Thomas Rogne have made costly errors when playing alongside him; Joe Ledley, hailed as a player stolen from under the noses of several EPL clubs when he was signed from Cardiff in the summer, has apparently faded after hitting a patch of good form earlier in the season, while up front Daryl Murphy remains unproven after missing much of the season through injury. The players who has come in for the most flak, however, is comparative Celtic veteran Georgios Samaras, described hilariously as ‘that big dancing hairbrush’ by a poster on the Kerrydale St forum, and in even less affectionate terms elsewhere. Yet for all the criticisms, Celtic remain a team with potential danger in all areas of the park. Gary Hooper has already proven himself to be a genuine penalty-box predator; Anthony Stokes (who missed Saturday’s draw with Dundee United with a virus) has contributed some vital goals and several assists from a predominantly wide position; Ki Sung Yeung is arguably the finest passer of the ball in Scottish football at the moment; Emilio Izaguirre is a tricky overlapping full back who scored a fine goal against St Johnstone earlier in the season; and if that isn’t enough, there is always the threat of the mercurial Paddy McCourt coming off the bench and doing what he did to us in the opening game of the season.

Both teams are still short of a few players due to injury. Celtic’s main absentees are club captain Scott Brown, and Israeli midfielder Beram Kayal, who made a good start to the season before injury ruled him out until the new year. Another player who started well this season, young forward James Forrest, is also currently unavailable. At the time of writing, there is no news on whether or not Anthony Stokes will have recovered sufficiently from his virus to line up against ICT. Caley Thistle are still without Chris Innes, David Proctor and Kenny Gillet, but summer signing Gil Blumenshtein is back in contention after several weeks out; in all honesty, any of those players would struggle to break into the Inverness team at the moment, although supporters are keen to see what Gillet can offer after his promising early displays.   One thing all ICT fans are praying for, though, is that the apparent hamstring tweak which forced Jonny Hayes off towards the end of the Hibs game will not hamper his chances of running out at Celtic Park this weekend.

Prediction?

I haven’t got one right yet this season, and for a game which may not, strictly speaking, be vital but still has so many hopes and dreams attached to it, I’m not even going to try. This week, I’ll leave predictions to the weird sisters. Or at least, to themannforthejob.

I don't have a prediction either, maybe because of all the uncertainty surrounding the game.  Will the ref's turn up, will they come from afar, or can the root of the problem be eradicated.  It may be a case of Much Ado about Nothing,  but lets's hope it's All's Well That Ends Well and it does not turn into a Shakespearean Tragedy.

***Latest Team & Ref News***

Kevin McCann has returned to Easter Road for some specialist advice on his injured knee, which should see Stuart Duff continue at right back.

Emilio Izaguirre will miss this game and possibly a couple more, with internal bleeding in the thigh.

Alain Hamer will be the man in the middle........................ of a controversy.  All three officials are from the footballing power that is Luxembourg.  So, there's no denying it this time; The referee is a hamer, by the way big man.