Glasgow Celtic Champions
Around November, whilst moonlighting on the ByTheMinCeltic podcast I half joked that we were heading towards a Glasgow derby title party – if we kept winning and the others kept to current form than the stars may align for a home title win against Glasgow’s newest club. It was a little tongue in cheek but now that date is looming large.
After 25 games Celtic are on 73 points, 24 clear of second place Aberdeen and 30 clear of the third placed side. So when might we win that title and what is required? Firstly let’s pick off the third placed team. At 30 points clear and with goal difference that’s ten wins more than us required, but it all comes to points so it’s 11 games to be sure. Provided the 3rd placed side win all their games, that would take us to away to Dundee on March 19th, but since we play them on March 12th, it means victory THAT DAY and it becomes mathematically impossible for them to catch us. So that then leaves the current 2nd placed side, Aberdeen.
With the Dons 24 points behind, that means as things stand we need to win a maximum of another 6 (six) games. Provided the Dons win all of their games coming up (and we win ours) that would mean home to Partick Thistle on Wednesday 5th April would be title-winning day. With the chances of the Dons matching us point for point over the next 6 games not guaranteed, Tynecastle and Dens Park are looking likely venues.
All of this assumes we keep winning and whilst that looks likely we also have to accept that such a feat would be truly remarkable. It would mean getting to 30 games in the season and dropping just 2 points. Most analysis suggests that each individual football game is determined 50% by luck and 50% by ability. Luck can be poor refereeing, lucky bounces, wonder saves and all the other stuff we all know happen at football and despite all of these, to win the volume of games to tie up the title this early is truly remarkable.
After a comment half said in jest, March 12th is looming large. It’ll likely be the day only one team from Glasgow can mathematically tie up the title but results depending it could be THE day. Winning the title with visitors who honour the corpse of our former rivals? What fun that would be.
