A popular prediction prevailed in the wake of Brendan Rodgers’ return to Celtic.
Start fast and the past will pale even further into insignificance, start slowly and it might just bubble to the surface once more. I’m not sure the latter half of that theory would bear out in reality, but the fixture gods appear to have an interest in potentially testing it out.
The opening to the reigning champions’ 2023/24 Premiership season is certainly an eye-catching one, with two marquee fixtures nestled among the opening five matches. Opening the campaign at home to Ross County, who escaped relegation by the skin of their teeth last season, is about as low key as they come.
But it is immediately followed by a treacherous trip north to Pittodrie. I say ‘marquee’ fixture, but it is often only so in name over what is served up for the Sky Sports cameras on the day; a traditionally tense affair which can stray into the blood and thunder genre on occasion.
It was a journey Celtic fans were forced to make only once last term, a week before Christmas and with minimal festive cheer to be found in the approach of their opponents. They arrived in Aberdeen to 90 minutes most notable for Jim Goodwin’s ‘just how low can a low block go?’ experiment and the returning Callum McGregor’s very late, an eventual just reward for Celtic’s 33 shots to Aberdeen’s two.
A year prior in October 2021, a dramatic 2-1 victory was retrospectively viewed as a turning point in the Ange Postecoglou era. Until Jota struck with six minutes to play that afternoon, Celtic had not won away from home in the Premiership under their new manager, and not at all on the road since February, a jarring statistic considering just how domestically dominant they have been in the time which has followed.
A 1-0 victory of his own in October 2016 sent Celtic nine points clear the league summit, so Rodgers knows rather well how important these fixtures can be. That it arrives so early in the season can, I suppose, be viewed two ways.
Results on the second weekend of the campaign cannot really have a significant bearing on how the rest of the year pans out, but it also an opportunity for Rodgers’ Celtic 2.0 to make an early statement of intent. A look across Glasgow shows that Rangers have been handed a relatively kind opening run, with four of their first five against teams from last term’s bottom six, and the expectation at Ibrox will be that nothing less than maximum points will do by the first derby meeting on September 2.
Seeing off Aberdeen two weeks prior would build early momentum ahead of a game it’s fair to assert Michael Beale will be under considerable pressure to win. Or, at least, not to lose. The Rangers manager cannot be considered anything other than an underdog up against a rival of Rodgers’ significant pedigree, and an ever-expectant Ibrox support will demand evidence that he can take points off Celtic when it really matters.
Comfortably besting Postecoglou’s already-crowned champions afforded Beale some breathing space, but that first face-off with Rodgers with meaningful points on the line is something else entirely. If Celtic can sweep through that opening run with maximum return, the onus is on what will be a largely new-look Rangers team to keep pace.
A good start is crucial considering Rodgers’ side will have visited Aberdeen, Rangers, Hibs and Hearts by the end of October. There have been some conspiratorial rumblings about that sequence but, as explained by the SPFL on Friday, this is an inversion of last season’s arrangement when Celtic played each of those teams at home across a similar period.
Nonetheless, it is a testing time, even for a Celtic team which has given little to nothing away in the league over the last year. They will also have the added challenge of bouncing straight from Premiership duty into the Champions League, then back to domestic action just a few days later.
Three of those post-European weekends will come against Hibs, Aberdeen and Hearts, with the remaining three being Livingston, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone. There is a 50-50 split between home and away fixtures after Champions League ties, with an obvious benefit of dining at UEFA’s top table meaning there is no dreaded Thursday-Sunday cycle, something managers, players and fans have rarely been a fan of.
We are still over a month away from that first Premiership kick-off, but the unveiling of the fixtures is the moment it starts to become real once more. Last season finished less than a month ago but there has already been significant change at Celtic Park.
Ange Postecoglou is gone, Jota looks set to depart Glasgow for the mega-riches of Saudi Arabia, and Aaron Mooy has announced his retirement from football. There will be arrivals to add to the capture of Odin Thiago Holm and Marco Tilio. There will, most likely, be further departures too as Rodgers makes his own mark on a side which has been crafted almost entirely in Postecoglou’s image.
The XI which lines up against County on day one could be quite different from the one which collected the Premiership trophy after beating Aberdeen back in May. Recent developments and goodbyes could indicate we are seeing a Celtic team which has swept all before them coming to the natural end of its cycle.
But 11 league titles from the last 12 suggest this club knows a thing or two about ensuring continued success, something Rangers have yet to find the magic formula for even after an unbeaten Premiership campaign in 2020/21. The test now for Celtic is how far they can go under a manager who has already won it all in Scotland. What constitutes success this time around for Rodgers? Domestic riches alone are unlikely to satisfy a highly ambitious coach, and he quite deliberately mentioned Europe throughout each one of several interviews which followed the announcement of his return to Glasgow a week ago.
But he also knows that it’s dealing with, as he himself put it, the ‘bread and butter’ of a long Premiership campaign that puts Celtic on that illustrious stage. What he can deliver for a fanbase which has largely forgiven his acrimonious 2019 departure remains an unknown, but the journey to it is now a little clearer.
