Unhappy Christmas For Tims Coming Up

It would be easy to think that going to Ibrox at this time of year will land Celtic with three gift wrapped points and 19 points of a distance between them and their smaller rivals, but that is wishful thinking.

While in the recent past Rangers have often entertained the spirit of goodwill by giving us enough points to bring a smile to timdom, the air of complacency currently settling over Celtic Park will cause us to be in for a rude awakening on Sunday.

Celtic are currently focused on bigger things than the Old Firm game because we just had the draw for the last 16 of the CL. Celtic, being the first British club to win the European Champions Cup in 1967, are rightfully back where they belong amongst Europe's elite.

Drawing Milan puts us amongst the unknown element as the Italians have an aged team which is made up of many of the team who were lucky to beat Celtic in the group stages 2 years ago at the San Siro. Back then their central defence had a combined age of 70 so they are likely to have a defence which has a total combined age of 140 by now.

With the speed and firepower Celtic have in attack with Jan Venegoor of Hesselink and Kenny Miller, we are almost certain to cause panic and mayhem on the park with Milan. If we beat them by a couple of goals - even 1-0 will do - then you absolutely have to fancy Celtic to score away to them at least.

Celtic have a reasonable away record in European qualifiers if you ignore Basele and Artmedia away. We've recently beaten Ajax away and won convincingly in Budapest, so all this nonsense of not winning away in the CL is just that - nonsense.

So what of the Old Firm game. Rangers are in the last 32 of the UEFA Cup at this point. In the old days of the UEFA Cup, before the nonsense of the "groups" where you play each team only once, Rangers would have been in the second round of the UEFA Cup.

So when guys like Ferguson and Smith (or whoever the kid was) says Rangers can do a "Celtic" and reach the Final of the UEFA Cup then who are we to disbelieve them. Rangers is a team filled with quality players who are starting to get their game together.

This was shown by the flawless performance against Hibs last week where clinical finishing and precision passing destroyed the best footballing team in Scotland. Contrast that to Celtic, who have struggled away from home on every occasion this season and you see the current trend.

The Hooped Ones struggled to snatch a draw at Easter Rd a few weeks ago and we embarrassed ourselves against Dunfermline last week. Not a lot is going right for Celtic and when you consider that the last time Kenny Miller scored in the SPL was against Rangers at Celtic Park then you can see the extent of the real problem - strikers who can't score.

So it's for this reason that Rangers are pretty much guaranteed to win this six pointer. Our defence is probably at its most vulnerable for many a year so we could be in for a gubbin of Artmedia proportions.

I fear for Us on Sunday.

Big Guns All Through To Last 16

While disappointing to not get another win in a nothing CL game, it can't be forgotten that Celtic done all the hard graft before tonight. Resting players is always a temptation that Europe's top sides have to evaluate and Strachan is no different.

Putting Nakamura on the bench when he is currently the best midfielder in Britain is always a difficult choice but we have one eye on the big SPL games coming up against Rangers in a game or two.

We can always take a break from the domestic drudgery, but we can't forget that the reason we're in a position to qualify from the CL groups is all down to our dominating the League Championship for the last 10 years.

Next week when we draw our opposition from one of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Milan, Lyon, or Valencia, we would do well to remember that those teams will need to come and play us in the second leg. There is no more terrifying an arena in the world than Celtic Park.

We will probably have won the League by the time we play these games at the end of February but by then we'll have spent a chunk of the Petrov fee and used some of the money from the CL run this year. Who we buy will be interesting.

Bobo isn't the rock he once was. While he is still recovering from injury you have to ask if he or Caldwell is really the answer. Caldwell is a liability after he sold the Benfica game away. In the middle of the park we had Jarosik and Gravesen who together are not the answer. We definitely need Nakamura's creative influence balanced with Lennon's predatory defensive midfield duties. Upfront we were without JVoH who would have been better suited for tonight.

So who of our opponents? The weak links in the list are Lyon and Chelsea. You'd have to fancy going through against either of those two given Mourinho's ego problem and Lyon being an unknown lot.

We'd probably want to avoid our old foes of Liverpool, Valencia, and Milan. It's Bayern Munich and Arsenal we should fear. Getting either of those two gives us no chance, any of the middle mob will need us to score a couple away and Chelsea/Lyon are the teams we shouldn't fear.

We can worry about the CL quarter-finals afterwards.