I hate International breaks. Celtic will be stronger now.

[Joe O'Rourke]

I must confess I’m not a big fan of International Football, especially when it interferes with Celtic trying to retain our title, we had a great result at Snake Mountain, so it would have been nice to carry on the good form of the team. Another problem we have at Celtic is, they call it an international break, but we have so many players away with their respective country, that hardly any of our first team players get a break, I’m thinking of our brilliant captain Callum McGregor, when was the last time he had a proper break?

We have nearly a whole team away on international duty, as well as Callum, Kyogo and Daizen are away with Japan, Yang and Oh are away with South Korea, Gus Lagerbielke got called up for Sweden, two of our newest recruits are away, Luis Palma with Honduras, and Paulo Bernardo with Portugal, Odin Holm is away with Norway, and worst of all, Liel Abad got injured while away with Israel, I suppose it goes with the territory when you sign top players, but it certainly puts more pressure on the players, not only with the playing extra matches, but with the amount of travelling required to be taken.

We didn’t start the season in brilliant form, we did get a great result at Aberdeen, but the loss at Kilmarnock and draw with St Johnstone were really disappointing, but we had a great and deserving result over in Govan. Before the start of the season Brendan and his staff would sit down and look at the fixtures, to see where the and when the most difficult matches would be played. You would think the most difficult would be the away matches at Snake Mountain, Aberdeen, and the two Edinburgh clubs. So if you had been away for the first four league games and didn’t know the results, but were told we amassed ten points, you would naturally assume, we had drawn at Aberdeen or more likely at Sevco, not at home to the Saints, so I would imagine we are at least on target, or even ahead of target after four games.

The rest of September is going to be tough in terms of matches, after the home game versus Dundee, we are then away to Feyenoord, Livingston, and Motherwell, this is when we need a strong squad for rotation, Liel being added to the injury list doesn’t help. I’m certainly hopeful that Reo Hatate will return, and Hopefully CCV will too, and we’ll get to see Luis Palma and Paulo Bernardo. To win titles you need a strong squad, but I also believe you need a settled team, I like to see us pick our best team every week, until we no longer can for whatever reason. I said last week that Brendan is a reactionary manager, he won’t play the same system in every game, he’ll change during a game, if necessary, I believe that’s the way we need to play, especially in the Champions League, we need to be smart against the top teams, I’m confident we’ll do well,

Finally, the consultation document sent out by the UK’s Senior traffic Commissioner for new Guidelines for taking passengers to sporting events in Scotland has been dumped already. Whoever thought they would get away with treating football supporters different from every other section of Scottish Society needs a new job. I didn’t see any support for the new proposals whatsoever, every football club, and every supporter treated the proposal with disdain, I’m delighted that our club stood firmly with our supporters. Maybe something the traffic commissioner should look at is the state of the roads in Scotland, I go to every game Celtic play, and all we ever get is roadworks all over Scotland, I’ve always said, traffic cones should be coloured Green & White, because that’s all we see. It was also good to see Humza Yousaf backing the travelling supporters, I suppose they had enough of targeting football supporter after the disastrous “Offensive Behaviour at Football Act”.

Glasgow’s still Green & White.