SEASON’S A FLOP IF YOU DON’T WIN THE TREBLE
McInnes: Loaded Celts should be coasting to a second clean sweep
DEREK McINNES believes Celtic’s season will be seen as disappointing if they don’t land a double treble.
And the Aberdeen manager, left, last night challenged his Dons to be the ones to deny Brendan Rodgers’s team a second successive
From Back Page clean sweep of the Scottish domestic silverware.
The Pittodrie side were the Hoops’ main rivals last season but lost both cup finals and finished second in the league.
Celtic already have the League Cup in the bag this term and boast an eight-point lead over the Reds in the league ahead of the Scottish Cup which starts on Saturday week.
No Scottish club has won backto-back trebles but McInnes says the huge financial advantage Celtic enjoy over the rest means they should be odds on for all the honours and it may feel like a letdown if they don’t pull it off.
He said: “Celtic are so far ahead resources wise that I think it will be disappointing to them if they don’t win a treble. They should be favourites in every domestic competition. Huge favourites.
“It’s up to the rest to find a way to stop that and get our own clubs winning something. That’s the challenge for us all.
“They lost their unbeaten domestic run recently and it was always going to be tough to do that but it doesn’t give us any extra confidence as we’re always pretty confident ahead of games against them.
“We know we have to be near our best to get a result, while that doesn’t need to be the case for Celtic. They have the quality to put you to the sword.
“But in our recent game at Parkhead we were unfortunate to go in at half-time 1-0 down. We did a lot of what we wanted to do really well but it’s hard to sustain it and it’s hard to keep the belief and motivation going when they take the lead.”
McInnes says he has no money available to boost his bid but also shot down suggestions his team wouldn’t be able to rise to the big occasion, adding: “There is no
money to spend. We got £100,000 for Jayden Stockley and good money for Jonny Hayes.
“We tried to reinvest it back into the team but I’ve never had cash to spend so I’ll try to be as creative as I can with the squad.
“We beat Rangers twice last year and up until last season we had beaten Celtic at some point in every season.
“We lost some as well though and Celtic certainly have the sign over us at the moment.
“But if those are the big games on which we are judged, against the Old Firm, that’s a testament to how well we have done over the past couple of seasons.
“Our big games are still Hibs and Hearts and we’ve always done well against them over the years so I find it’s something that’s sometimes thrown at us.
“But we won two semi-finals last year, I’d say those were big games which we used to be criticised for not dealing with.
“When we lose a big game, it’s an easy thing to throw at us.
“We would like to win more of them but we do win our fair share I believe.”