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Celtic’s dominance of Scottish football is showing no signs of slowing down after yet another stellar season under manager Brendan Rodgers.
With the Scottish League Cup already won, the Hoops will head into the final five games of the Scottish Premiership season needing just one more point to clinch the title.
They are also through to the Scottish Cup final, where they will face Aberdeen at Hampden Park in Glasgow on Saturday, May 24.
The fixture is one of the highlights of the sporting events calendar in Scotland and Celtic are massive favourites to lift the trophy for the third consecutive season.
They defeated Kilmarnock, Raith Rovers, Hibernian and St Johnstone to reach the final and it would be a brave move to back against them next month.
Celtic were imperious against St Johnstone in the semi-final, recording an emphatic 5-0 victory to leave Rodgers waxing lyrical about their performance.
“I’m so pleased for the players,” Rodgers said. “A couple of weeks ago they took a bit of stick for losing against St Johnstone.
“But you’ve seen in the last two performances, we’ve taken the start in to the game that we want. The mentality is really good – we’re humble in the way that we work and in our mentality.
“We showed the quality and ambition in the game to keep looking for more goals. We have to put so much in to a game like that today.
“We dominate the ball, of course, but within that there’s lots of movement and rotation, and the players then find the quality to score the goals.”
With one trophy already in the bag and success in the league title race a formality, Celtic should be chasing a treble when they face Aberdeen at Hampden, a game that will be televised as well as live blogged by different sports news sites like SportsView and the BBC.
The Dons had a relatively easy passage to the semi-finals, defeating Elgin City, Dunfermline Athletic and Queen’s Park on their way to a last-four showdown against Hearts.
A Craig Gordon own goal put Aberdeen ahead in the 17th minute, but Lawrence Shankland’s excellent half-volley levelled the tie ten minutes later.
However, Michael Steinwender’s dismissal just before half-time tipped the scales in Aberdeen’s favour, although they were unable to capitalise in normal time.
Hearts were reduced to nine men after Cammy Devlin was shown a second yellow card in extra-time and the Dons eventually made their numerical advantage count.
Oday Dabbagh scored the decisive goal with two minutes remaining to send Aberdeen through to their first Scottish Cup final since 2016/17.
Manager Jimmy Thelin acknowledged that Celtic will be a tough nut to crack, but believes his team’s fighting spirit could serve them well at Hampden.
“If you’re a manager or a player you don’t have so many chances in your career to arrive to big finals or fight in the top of the league, so you have to also enjoy it,” Thelin said.
“A final is more than the football, it’s emotions – it’s expectations, it’s all the thing around it, and that’s why cup games are so difficult.
“You have to manage emotions and the best way to learn that is to live it and try to be there as many times as possible.
“We know what it means to the club to win the final and we will try our best but at least now we are put us in a good position.
“We are there, so that’s the first thing and then we have to take the fight with us for the game next month.”
