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DEE-DAY - DUNDEE V CELTIC PREVIEW

Saturday 1st October - BT SPORT 1

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DEE-DAY – DUNDEE V CELTIC PREVIEW (Saturday 12.15 – BT SPORT 1)

Following on from the highly charged physical and mental excursion with Man City during the week, we come crashing back to reality with a trip to Tayside to take on Dundee for league business. It’s a bit like going from Vegas to Troon, but we know what we signed up for when the draw was made, and this is a better alternative to no European football in midweek.

Paul ‘The Hitman’ Hartley is a man under severe pressure at Dens Park and it doesn’t get much tougher for him this weekend than coming face to face with a footballing machine intent on crushing all who dare even go toe to toe with it. The sheer size of the task ahead will more than likely have him comfort eating tonight, praying to the big man upstairs for some form of fitba miracle.

Dundee are still without a win at home and have not won at all since the opening day of the season, when they impressively gubbed Ross County 3-1, and there is no doubt that the departure of Kane Hemmings has hit them hard as it’s tough to see where any of their goals are going to come from.

Meanwhile we’ll likely ring the changes, with Simunovic coming in for Sviatchenko or The Black Jesus. I would also like to see Kieran Tierney rested as he’s looked done in recently and the last thing we want is for him to have the physical stature of Mr Burns so we should either go 3-5-2 or have Izzy in at left back. Forrest/Sinclair should be benched as well for their efforts during the week and the dug lover Roberts deserves a start for what should be a straightforward game. Up front, Griffiths will probably be given the nod ahead of Dembele, who should be wrapped in cotton wool and be told to put his feet up with Soccer Saturday on or something.

On the plus side, it looks like Craig Gordon is now our number one for the season after his fine performance during the week, plus patter from the manager about how he shouldn’t have dropped him hints that he’ll go out as a first choice goalie before his contract is up next summer.

Our last two performances against Dundee have been 0-0, but that won’t be the case tomorrow.

Highly suspect we’ll come flying out of the blocks and kill the game off in the first half hour.

As always, give us pelters if we are wrong, but we never are of course…..