Champions relish trip to Murray Park

Celtic’s double chasing youth side face Rangers for the first time this season at Murray Park this morning, kick-off 11am.

John Kennedy’s side celebrated winning the title last Saturday by booking a place in the SFA Youth Cup Final by beating St Mirren 4-1 the following day.

At whatever level a Glasgow derby is a special occasion with Rangers determined to take the scalp of champions for their own pride.

Despite the attention of the club focusing on events at Rugby Park Kennedy and his coaching team have been concentrating on their energies on taking all three points away from Rugby Park.

“We’ve focussed on our own match this week, the boys have been great in training and we’re hoping that we can carry that confidence into the match,” Kennedy explained.

“You should never need to motivate players for this fixture no matter what level it’s at. There’s always that added incentive and we know that Rangers will be right up for it and want to beat us in the same way as we want to go and beat them.

“The fact that we’ve won the league means nothing tomorrow, they won’t treat it that way and neither will we.”

Rangers trail Celtic by 16 points (despite no deduction for going into administration) but showed their form last weekend with a 6-1 win over Motherwell.

“They had a sluggish start to the season but Rangers are a strong team and their results have got better and better as the season has gone on,” Kennedy added.

“On their day they can dominate teams, we have to stand up to the challenge, play our game rather than be distracted by who our opponents are.

“Motherwell were down to ten men but to score six against them is no mean feat, obviously we’ve taken note of that result but we’ve had good results along the season and we’ll take confidence from that.”

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