Johan Mjallby will lead Celtic out at Hampden tomorrow in the absence of Neil Lennon.
The Celtic boss has been banned from the pre-match cermonies as well as the touchline and dug out.
Rather than give the ‘honour’ of leading the team out to someone else such as kitman and Lisbon Lion John Clark Celtic have decided to act in a business as usual manner by getting Mjallby to lead the team out.
The Swede was the first person that Lennon turned to when he took over from Tony Mowbray almost a year ago with the former defender keen to play down his stand-in role.
“It’s a fantastic honour for me to be leading the team out but I would rather see Neil do it,” Mjallby admitted. “Neil’s been very impressive in my eyes as boss, especially the way he motivates the team.
“He really gets the team up for games. I see him as very close to Martin O’Neill.
“Obviously Martin had much more experience, but maybe Neil’s a bit more attack-minded than Martin in the way he sets out the team.
“Martin O’Neill always got me fired up because he knew he could shout at me, his face ten inches away from me.
“He knew he would get the best out of me that way. Martin knew every single player and how they worked mentally. I think Neil’s got the same quality.”
Looking forward to the fifth match against Rangers since the turn of the year Mjallby belives that winning at Ibrox on January 2 has been key to the turnaround in Celtic’s season.
He added: “Mentally getting the wins has helped us, there has been a turnaround and we got a lift from beating Rangers on the second of January.
“In the last few games against Rangers we’ve played very well and got the results, we need to be at our best against them.
“From that game we have been on fire for three months with just a slip at Motherwel in the league, apart from that we have been on a great run.
“The football has been really good, we all want that but you need results to back up your football and we’ve done that.
“I watched Rangers playing against PSV Eindhoven on television but we know so much about each other from having played so often recently.
“I don’t think that there will be many surprises on Sunday, it’s always going to be close in Old Firm games so it’s about what happens on the day.
“Our confidence is sky high just now and we’re looking forward to trying to win the first trophy of the season.”
The double standards of the SFA.
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