The Celtic Star
·5 May 2025
A draw was a fair reflection of the game, Celtic’s focus is now on Hampden

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·5 May 2025
Viljami Sinisalo. at Ibrox. theRangers v Celtic, 4 May 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
As with every game as supporters of Celtic football club we go into it anticipating a win, but unfortunately there are sometimes when that doesn’t happen, and yesterday at Ibrox was one of those slightly disappointing days.
Despite having already clinched the title and ultimately nothing but price riding on the outcome we still wanted to win at the home of our bitter neighbours as we always do on derby day, dead-rubber or no dead-rubber.
VAR decision at Ibrox for their offside goal. theRangers v Celtic, 4 May 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
There was also the fact that Celtic had lost our last two derbies and we wanted to rectify that by gaining some pride heading into the close season, but in the end it wasn’t to be. The overall head-to-head for the season finished level with two wins a piece and one draw in the five Glasgow Derby meetings. They took more points in the league (seven to our four) but we picked up the silverware at Hampden in the Premier Sports League Cup Final at Hampden back in December.
Winning that trophy started our three pronged pursuit of a treble and that was added to last weekend at Tannadice when the Scottish Premiership title was secured yet again. That’s a remarkable 13 titles in 14 season for Celtic. Next we have the Scottish Cup Final against Aberdeen to prepare for on 24 May back at Hampden.
A draw yesterday was a fair reflection on the game, and one we should be more than content with considering our circumstances on the personnel front.
Adam Idah celebrates scoring at Ibrox to level the score at 1-1. theRangers v Celtic, 4 May 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
We started the game without four first team regulars in Kasper Schmeichel, Alistair Johnston, Jota and Nicolas Khun. Daizen Maeda made the starting XI having only just recently returned from Japan due to family reasons as Daizen’s wife is back home and due to deliver their third child imminently.
To suffer the set back of conceding on the stroke of half time despite a competent first half showing, but then show the character to fight back after the restart whilst creating chances to win the game can only be seen as a positive.
The players showed more hunger and desire than the previous derbies, and that was what we demanded from them so despite failure to win all three points we can still feel satisfactory about the final outcome.
Daizen of course had a wonderful chance in the last few seconds to win it that that would have been awesome. But he can keep his next glory moment for the Scottish Cup Final. After collecting multiple awards last night, he has been given permission by Brendan to head back to Japan if he wants to and you imagine he’ll do that. So it might be Trophy Day before we see our Player of the Year in action again.
Adam Idah, James Forrest, Yang and Johnny Kenny can cope just fine against Hibs at Celtic Park and Aberdeen at Pittodrie. Then it’s Trophy Day against St Mirren before the Scottish Cup Final and the chance to complete a ninth treble for Celtic.
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