GORDON: I’VE CHRISSED AND MADE UP WITH CRITIC SUTTON
CRAIG GORDON has revealed how a chance meeting with Chris Sutton helped the pair to bury the hatchet.
The Celtic keeper felt the Record Sport columnist had been over the top with his criticism and that he was being singled out earlier in the season. But after talking it out with the
former Hoops striker he now reckons Sutton was right to highlight certain errors.
Gordon, who is in Dubai for Celtic’s warm-weather training camp, said: “I’m not confrontational. I don’t go looking for trouble or anything. I wouldn’t have
said anything towards him and, yeah, he was perfectly pleasant.
“I’m not saying he is 100 per cent wrong. Some of the things he said were right. I just think it was a little bit over the top at that time. I felt it was unfair.
“He has been pretty fair since and if there has been something he has commented on it has been right.
“Hopefully that’s the end of it and if I am there to be fairly criticised then that’s fine.”
Gordon, meanwhile, believes this week in Dubai will help Celtic prove their doubters wrong in the second half of the campaign.
Points dropped to Hibs, Hearts and Rangers during December had led to claims from some opponents and pundits that Brendan Rodgers’s champions have been sussed out.
But goalie Gordon believes the week in the Middle East will reaffirm some key elements of their game.
And when asked if rivals now had their measure, the Hoops No.1 said: “We’ll see. I’m looking forward to the second half of the season.
“If they think they have us sussed, well, I’m looking forward to that.
“It will be a good challenge to come out in the second half of the season and really push on and be dominant.
“We want to improve our game to make sure that, whatever anyone throws at us, we have the answers.
“We have played a lot of games and we now have this break to get the team back to doing the things we do really well. It’s also tactically about getting wee reminders of how we go about playing, our defensive structure and how we translate that into attack.
“We can work on that this week. We’ll be doing long sessions working hard on our teamwork so that when we come back we’ll see we have improved in a lot of areas.
“This week will be vitally important in terms of the second half of the season.
“We’ve got a two-week period now until we get back into games and we will be doing a lot of coaching sessions.
“We don’t get an awful lot of time to do that when there is so many games.
“The manager will get to work with the team and work positionally with us on how we want to go about playing in the second half of the season.
“That’s the most important part of being out here.
“It’s also about having that time to be together and making sure we have a big push towards the second half of the season.”
Celtic’s full squad will tale part in training in Dubai today although Patrick Roberts won’t join the main group.
The winger is on the winter break as part of his rehabilitation but he is not ready to team up with colleagues and will continue on a personal training programme as he fights back from a severe hamstring tear.