Brown was enthusiastic about Brendan Rodgers’ team’s chances of winning the title since he predicted they would defeat Philippe Clement’s team last month.
While the majority of us salivate at the thought of a championship bout going to the wire, Scott Brown thinks it’s already over.
And to be honest, the guy who led Celtic to nine consecutive Premiership titles does have some expertise with these kinds of things. His former team has been placed in cold storage for the closure, leading by eight points after four straight victories, including a pivotal triumph in the holiday Old Firm match.
While the majority of us salivate at the thought of a championship bout going to the wire, Scott Brown thinks it’s already over.
And to be honest, the guy who led Celtic to nine consecutive Premiership titles does have some expertise with these kinds of things. His former team has been placed in cold storage for the closure, leading by eight points after four straight victories, including a pivotal triumph in the holiday Old Firm match.
“I think Celtic will win the league. Celtic overall have the better team, especially the front three – they look more like they’re going to score than Rangers do. They’ve got more legs throughout the whole park and they’ve probably got better midfielders and defenders.”
Not much room for doubt there then. But then Brown insists he also knew that Brendan Rodgers would come out on top last month, when Celtic’s manager squared up to Philippe Clement for the very first time following a December wobble which featured back-to-back defeats against Kilmarnock and Hearts.
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He nodded: “I knew they were going to get the result. When Celtic lose a couple of games they always bounce back well and Brendan is always calm. He’ll have had everyone switched on and especially at home for a game as big as that one.”
And now, in the last weeks of the transfer window, Rodgers is putting pressure on the men in Celtic’s boardroom to stand up and contribute. He must have used the word “quality” around a dozen times in the run-up to the January sales if he used it just once. However, he has been waiting for such characteristic for 11 days.
“Everyone wants to bring in more quality; it’s a given in the transfer market,” Brown stated. Since it is only accessible twice a year, every member of the board will make every effort to advance it.
“Brendan will try to get as much quality as he possibly can. They have a big squad so it happens that people will go, people will come in. It just depends on what areas the manager wants.”
But while Rodgers waits for his new arrivals, Brown believes Celtic will stamp home their superiority in the second half of the season regardless of who comes and goes. He said: “Especially now they don’t have European football so the league will be their main focus. It will be week to week for them, most weeks.
“Celtic aren’t too used to that. It will let them rest a little bit more. It will let the manager work on shape, structure and how they are going to press.
“And, especially with new bodies coming in, that will be important for Brendan because he will want them to understand how he wants them to play but also what the standards are at Celtic and what he expects of them.
“Rangers will have more games and that can go one way or another, to be honest. When I was a player, I loved playing the games because that’s what you want to do. You want to be playing Saturday-Wednesday-Saturday.
“But sometimes if you get beaten in one of those games, then lose the next one, you can get on a downer and that can be hard to get out of. Celtic will have more chances for recovery and hopefully keep the fitter squad.”
And then all roads will lead to Ibrox at the start of April when the bell sounds on Rodgers v Clement, round two. It’s Brown’s hope that by then some sort of breakthrough has been made in the petty and long-running dispute between the clubs which has led to a lock-out on away fans.
In typically spiky fashion, he said: “It is sad that there are no away fans for either side. But if somebody starts it, we finish it – that’s the usual thing for us. But hopefully we can get back to having away fans at the games.
“It would be good because there is nothing better than going away from home and seeing 5000 or 6000 fans supporting you instead of just seeing 50,000 Rangers fans. It’s the biggest game in Scotland and probably in Britain. So you want to try to advertise it as well as you can.
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“In my time, the only games we played without away fans was during Covid, where there was no-one allowed in the stadium. It was like playing with your mates down the park. There was nobody to spur you on. You celebrated a goal, ran to the corner flag, then realised no-one was there and you’d slowly walk back to the halfway line.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s good if you go away from home, you win and then see that stadium empty. We did that a lot with Celtic and that’s why everything changed.
“The thing is, we ended up with just 700 fans in the corner and they were still louder than the home fans. Obviously, it maybe worked for them in that season during Covid when Stevie Gerrard was there. After that, we bounced back.
“But you want the fans. You want the passion from both sides and that little bit of banter between both sets of fans.”
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