Liam Scales: We are in the best possible place going in to Sunday's derby

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Celtic F.C.

·8 mai 2026

Liam Scales: We are in the best possible place going in to Sunday's derby

With less than two days to go until the final Glasgow derby of the season, excitement and anticipation is building at the prospect of what could unfold on Sunday afternoon at Paradise.

The Hoops are well in the fight for this year’s Scottish Premiership title, and a win against Rangers could go a long way in Celtic’s fight for a fifth consecutive league trophy.

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Liam Scales is no stranger to the derby-day build-up, having faced Rangers as a Celtic player on 16 occasions so far and, if he features in Sunday’s match as expected, it will mark his 150th appearance in a Celtic jersey.

Speaking to the media at Lennoxtown today ahead of this Sunday’s match, the Irish defender said that the Celts are in a good place going in to the game as he looked ahead to what will be an electric atmosphere in Glasgow’s East End.

“I’m excited for Sunday.” Scales said. “There’s a lot on the line and these are the type of games that you want to play in, so I’m excited and really motivated.

“We’ve done well over the last five games and we’re in the best place we could possibly be going in to a game like this.

‘We’re training hard, preparing tactically and we’re in a good place.’

“Everyone wants the same thing, which is to win trophies. To have everyone back in the stadium, the atmosphere will be great and we’re looking forward to it.

“Having the noise there, it can be intimidating for the opposition, and it gives us a bit extra. We’ve felt the positive impact from that in the last couple of weeks."

There are only three games to go in this season’s league calendar, and, as it stands, Martin O’Neill’s men trail league leaders Hearts by three points with the sides set to meet on the final day at Celtic Park.

Before then, of course, there is the small matter of a Glasgow derby and a trip to Fir Park to face a dangerous Motherwell side for Celtic, and two wins would set up an unmissable last-day shootout for the title.

On the prospect of potentially lifting another league trophy, Scales said that triumph this season would be extra special given the context.

He added: “It would be amazing. It would be probably be a little bit sweeter to win it this year because we’ve been able to show that we can bounce back from bad results and bad spells.

‘But we just need to take every game one-by-one and try to win them all.’

“Nobody in the building at any stage had lost the belief that we can win the league. After certain bad results it made it a little bit more difficult, but we’ve never been out of it.”