Brendan Rodgers is strong on analysis and leaves little to chance.
When he looks back at this season’s three wins over Sevco he believes that the ‘closest’ match was also the most dominant.
Despite winning 5-1 at home in September Rodgers was most impressed by Celtic’s 1-0 Hampden win in the semi-final of the Betfred Cup.
After a lifeless first half, during which Tom Rogic missed a sitter the hoops took charge after the break.
If Craig Thomson hadn’t decided to disallow a perfectly good Erik Sviatchenko goal a repeat of the 5-1 match could have been on the cards.
As it was it took a late flick of Moussa Dembele’s heal to give Celtic victory with Aberdeen overcome in the final.
Dembele has been the constant feature through all three victories and is bang in form for tomorrow.
Game by game the young Frenchman has been more and more influential, he signed off 2016 at Ibrox playing keep ball in each corner flag in front of the gloating away supporters- kicking off the countdown to March 12 and another step towards a whitewash.
CELTIC 5-1 SEVCO
The loss of Leigh Griffiths going into the match was a big blow but a new hero was ready and waiting.
When Dembele opened the scoring with a bullet header the noise could be heard way beyond Brigton Cross.
Dembele’s second was a work of art emphasising Celtic’s dominance, after the break the match turned into a route.
Sevco were broken, the Magic Hat exposed and gobby Barton on his way back to England with his twitter taunts retweeted by thousands of Celtic fans.
SEVCO 0-1 CELTIC
After a midweek loss to Borussia Monchengladbach there was a question mark about how the hoops would react to that set-back.
Sevco had a full week to prepare for the match but were again left chasing shadows as Celtic moved up a gear to dominate the second half.
The introduction of Stuart Armstrong and in particular Leigh Griffiths stretched the Sevco defence- when Griffiths set up Dembele it sent a French television station into meltdown while the Celtic players celebrated wildly with the fans.
SEVCO 1-2 CELTIC
For 20 minutes Sevco looked competent as an eight match schedule during December took it’s toll.
A couple of dubious offside calls went against Celtic but when Dembele hammered home from a corner there was no flag and the dreams of the home support crashed on the spot.
There was only one team in the second half but it took some brilliance from Patrick Roberts and Stuart Armstrong to set up the winner scored by Scott Sinclair.
After their gruelling December fixture list and without Kieran Tierney and Tom Rogic this was an impressive victory, more impressive than the scoreline.