The Top Flight Tussle - Hearts v Celtic

Guess who’s back? It seems that, in football, inserted in the contracts of every controversial transfer is the clause that the player must return for a game sharpish. No less so in the case of a certain S. Pressley, with just two games under his belt in the green and white of Celtic. He will travel with his new team-mates to an all-too-familiar stage. Indeed, it would be a push to call this an away match for him.

The fans’ reaction will be an interesting one. Having given the best part of a decade’s worth of sterling service to the club, we can probably rule out any pelters from the stands. More intriguingly, the Pressley switch is becoming, for many, the big, dirty hallmark of the Romanov regime. Will the fans use Elvis’ return to give Vlad a piece of their mind?

The benefits of an away victory for Celtic, meanwhile, are hardly worth going into. Indeed, Romanov himself would probably have to feature in the starting line-up for a defeat to set any kind of alarm bells ringing. Hearts, meanwhile, need a win badly in their quest to ensure Champions League football returns to, er, Murrayfield. Aberdeen and Rangers both face winnable home ties tomorrow, so they can’t afford to lose further ground.

A nice twist in proceedings would be the fielding at some stage of ‘the next Hagi’ Dumitru Copil, whom Hearts snatched from under Celtic’s noses last week. At just 16, a home debut would be most unlikely, but then again, as a Celtic centre-back knows all too well, stranger things have happened round there.

Category: Scottish Premier League

Tags: Aberdeen, Celtic, Dumitru Copil, Hearts, Rangers, Scotland Premier League, SPL, Steven Pressley

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