The Scottish Premiership season ends this weekend and Celtic play the role of champions against St Mirren.
Celtic Are Champions
No need for final day drama north of the border. Instead, Celtic can turn their Celtic Park home into a party atmosphere on Saturday.
A Party Atmosphere
After Rangers’ comeback win on Tuesday, their eventual 5-2 mauling of Dundee at Ibrox pushed the Scottish Premiership title race on for another 24 hours at least. 24 hours later and leaders Celtic were making the trip to Ayrshire to face Kilmarnock.
Failure to land even a single point at Rugby Park would have kicked the title quest on to the final weekend of this current Premiership season. Unfortunately for Rangers, Celtic do not tend to use the word failure all that often and were in no mood to hang around in midweek.
Not only were Brendan Rodgers’ men not prepared to take their chances this weekend, they did not even want to take their chances on Wednesday night. The deadlock was broken by Adam Idah after just five minutes, seven minutes Daizen Maeda had all but sealed the championship deal.
However, the Hoops were not prepared to stop there either and with three more goals that night. An emphatic 5-0 win for the visitors meant a miserable evening for Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes but delirium for his counterpart in the opposite technical area.
For the Celtic Park outfit it is now 12 titles from the last 13 attempts and although there were questions throughout this campaign in regard to whether manager Rodgers still had enough nous to deal with the pressure of the Old Firm rivalry, it was his experience that shone through.
After taking hold of the managerial baton at Celtic Park for a second time, the Northern Irishman’s appointment was seen as the safest possible pair of hands under the circumstances and the right man to build on Ange Postecoglou’s impressive tenure.
While there is no doubt that Celtic’s players have impressed this season and although their upcoming opponents St Mirren were nowhere to be seen in terms of the 2023/24 title race, their own 2023/24 campaign has given the Paisley-based outfit reasons to celebrate.
Celebrations that could have simply stopped with Stephen Robinson’s men earning a berth in the Championship Group of the post-split phase of the campaign. Celebrations that now come around after securing a fifth-place finish as well.
In doing so, it means St Mirren have secured a return to European football and with their last continental excursions being all the way back in 1987, supporters of an older persuasion may be required to dust off the passports before the summer comes to an end.
But now it is time for the first of my two tips and with this being a party atmosphere, St Mirren will be in no position to act as spoilers. Therefore, I am backing the newly crowned champions to win by a three-goal margin at odds of 4/1.
In addition to this, I am also going to opt for one of Celtic’s senior pros to truly get the party started and what better person than Callum McGregor. The midfielder lifted the trophy on Wednesday, I am backing him to score the opener on Saturday at odds of 16/1.
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