While I enjoyed Luke McCowan’s cheeky dig at the Ibrox side, Celtic need to need to back it up on Sunday…

Celtic midfielder Luke McCowan passed a very cute dig at the Ibrox side yesterday.

So cute and under the radar was the comment, that a few people, who were a bit slow on the uptake, missed it at the time.

In the aftermath, it has the Ibrox fans raging.

Mission accomplished, it achieved exactly what it set out to do.

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock and missed the comment, here’s what he had to say when he was asked if he expected the Ibrox side to form a guard of honour for the champions:

No. No, not at all. But that’s just how it is, isn’t it? I don’t know how it would be if it was on the other foot. We’ll never really know I don’t think, but we will wait and see what happens.

And for the foreseeable future, at least, we never really will know if they’d ever expect us to form a guard of honour for them.

While I enjoyed the comment, I feel that McCowan, as well as the rest of the Celtic players, will need to back up such confidence with a devastating performance at Ibrox.

It is long overdue now.

McCowan himself didn’t exactly cover himself in glory last March at Celtic Park.

We can be cocky in the run up to it, but that has to translate into a victory in Govan.

And we know it’s not going to be an easy game.

The Ibrox side have little pride left as it is after a disastrous season, so in reality, this is the be all and end all for them.

They will be going all out to win this one to try and restore some pride.

Added to that, Barry Ferguson probably sees it as his last chance to show he’s fit for the job on a permanent basis.

Although it’s clear he’s probably already accepted he isn’t going to be the one to get it.

Still, there’s probably a sliver of hope still there, and while his players may have given up on him, he sure as hell hasn’t let go of his dream job just yet.

It’s up to Celtic to ensure that last sliver of hope is dead and buried by the final whistle.

As I’ve said, a win for us is now long overdue.

I also think that after last Saturday’s performance in Paisley, the wheels have well and truly fallen off the Bazza and the four bears’ bandwagon.

It’s up to Brendan Rodgers and his players to take advantage of that.

But the approach has to be much, much different to the last three outings.

As we discussed in our last podcast, there is no doubt that they’re going to come at us from the off.

They will firmly believe we can be got at after their last two performances against us.

We need to stand fast for the first 15 to 20 minutes and weather the storm.

I believe if we do that, we will go on to win the game comfortably.

As I said in the podcast, Brendan Rodgers will have studied Barry Ferguson’s tactics, or lack of tactics, whichever way you want to look at it, since the last game.

He will also show his players videos of all of the defeats the Ibrox side have experienced at Ibrox since Ferguson took charge.

Under his management since he took over, the Ibrox side has conceded 2 goals or more in every game they have played, with the exception of the 0-0 draw at home to Athletic Bilbao.

2 goals.

That has to be Rodgers’ focus.

He has to tell his players, if everybody can score two goals against them, then surely we can do it at Ibrox?

We even scored two against them at Celtic Park, and it should have been a hell of a lot more.

Based on our current form and the amount of goals we’ve been scoring of late, then we should be capable of scoring a least two.

There can be no mentality shift going into this game.

It has to remain the same as the last three fixtures.

Obviously, another 5 goals would be amazing.

I’ll happily take a win.

But I’ll stick to my podcast prediction.

3-1, with Maeda, Idah, and Kuhn the scorers.

Let’s do this Celtic!