Scott Brown is stepping up his preparations for the weirdest season of his career.
The Celtic skipper turns 35 shortly as he prepares to lead his side in search of 10-in-a-row, an achievement that Scottish football has never witnessed before.
During his career Brown has revelled in many different atmospheres. The adulation of Celtic Park has spurred him on to new heights while the abuse and derision at Ibrox, Tynecastle and Pittodrie.
The new season getting underway in two months time will be a campaign like no other. The roar and reactions of the fans will be absent with Brown getting on with his job against the backdrop usually associated with the hush of a golf course or snooker in an arena or theatre. Minus the polite applause after shots are played.
It’s a situation that Brown could never have envisaged but one that he is now preparing for as he told the Daily Record:
If you watch golf and I do, that’s a sport where people aren’t shouting and singing when the players are playing and you can appreciate that. There’s no shouting and cheering in the middle of someone’s swing or anything like that, so it can happen in other sports.
But it’s different in football. You miss the cheering and the shouting and the way people can push you, especially for us at Celtic Park when 60,000 fans inside there can be the 12th man for us at times.
They can help you get over some tricky times and tough moments in games and when you get that goal, you continue and go on and they put that faith in you by pushing and spurring you forward.
They have dug deep for us at times and that has led to us scoring late winners or late equalisers in matches. It’s kind of what football needs. It really needs the supporters. But don’t get me wrong, we’d deal with it. We have to deal with whatever situation which faces us.
It’s not something we haven’t experienced. For example, in training, you have 11 against 11 matches and they are still very fierce and very competitive. That edge is still there because you still want to win as you play.
It’ll just be exactly the same situation as that for us and it’ll mean that games will be on telly so that fans can see us and watch us.
The stadiums might be empty or they might be able to get some fans into them, I don’t know. I’m not sure how it is all going to work, but for me it’s still a game and you go into it with that winning mentality.
Whatever comes and is put towards us, we need to deal with it. We’ll deal with whatever way it is safe for us to get onto the park. Once we get onto the park, the mindset will be to win.
We’ll want to start the season off strongly just in the manner that we did last season and that’ll be the sole focus, regardless of the conditions in which we are playing.
The SPFL are in negotiations with Sky Sports about virtual season tickets allowing fans to stream matches at home.