CELTIC boss Brendan Rodgers watched his side go 16 points clear at the top – then joked the Parkhead KITMAN was the only person who didn’t get a song from the support!
The Celtic fans sang about previous bosses Billy McNeill, Martin O’Neill and Tommy Burns as their side beat Dundee United 2-0 with goals from Japanese pair Daizen Maeda and Reo Hatate.
But the fans also went through a repertoire of songs about previous favourites, including Jimmy Johnstone, Henrik Larsson and Odsonne Edouard.
There was also a brief fans’ singalong about Kieran Tierney in the aftermath of Rodgers’ comments following Saturday’s match against St Mirren.
And Rodgers grinned: “I think the kit man was the only one that missed out tonight!
“But it’s all part of the dance here.
“My job was to put the best team on the pitch and win consistently so everyone can smile.
“I thought the crowd were brilliant tonight.
“They can get a bit edgy, and we make them fret a wee bit. We can do that and it was there.
“So that support was so important and it was fantastic tonight.
“It was such a cold night to come out and see the team and the numbers turned up and gave the team great support.
“That allowed us to push over the line.”
Rodgers paid tribute to Greg Taylor – on his 200th Celtic appearance.
He said: “He’s been absolutely fine with it.
“I think there was probably a bigger deal made of it than what my observation actually was.
“It’s gone now.
“He was very good in the game, as he always is. He’s very consistent and had a really good performance.”
Rodgers will assess Nicolas Kuhn this morning after he felt a thigh tightness in the warm-up and was replaced by Hyunjun Yang.
Rodgers said: “It was a really good win for us.
“First half we had a lot of control in the game and got into some really good areas and maybe could have been more goals in front.
“For a little spell in the second half we lost a little bit of our attacking connection in the game so we weren’t as fluent getting through the pitch.
“We had to defend long direct free-kicks and long throw-ins into the box. But we came through that really well and then finished it off with the second goal.
“It was a thoroughly deserved win. From the first whistle we were trying to impose ourselves in the game and get into some really good areas.
“I felt we could have crossed it once or twice more than we did.
“But it was a freezing night against a team who sat really deep.
“We saw it up at Dundee United and we’ve seen it here. It’s no criticism. That’s what you have to come up against and you have to face it.
“The players showed the mentality to win, which was important.
“This is a game where very few times you give little and get rewards. You have to give everything.
“The players have done that and they got the rewards in the end. So I’m really pleased with that.”
United boss Jim Goodwin – who made five changes to his starting eleven – admitted: “It was always going to be a big challenge. It’s a crazy amount of fixtures at this time of year.
“We’ve players who are struggling in terms of energy levels.
“But the players never threw the towel in and we believed we would get one or two opportunities.
“There were never any clear-cut chances and we can’t argue about the result.”
Keep up to date with ALL the latest news and transfers at the Scottish Sun football page
THIS is my kind of dry January – caked in sand and sun cream watching the legendary Dakar Rally.
I’m here with Dacia.
That’s right, Dacia.
The people who make Britain’s cheapest new car. The £14k Sandero supermini.
Only they’ve built a £1million desert buggy (Dacia Sandhero?) to conquer the world’s toughest off-road race.
For those of you who don’t know, Dakar is a punishing 3,200-mile speed test across the breathtaking dunes of Saudi Arabia.
Basically, the entire WRC season in 13 days.
Add the non-competitive road sections between each timed stage and it’s the equivalent of a full year of Formula 1. In less than two weeks.
Quite a challenge, then.
So why is a budget brand spending upwards of £25million to go off-road racing against the might of Ford and Toyota when it doesn’t really need to?
Sandero is the No1-selling motor across Europe. Dacia is No2 for people who buy a car with their own money. The brilliant £24k Duster 4×4 is a contender for 2025 European Car of the Year.
Life is good.
The answer is, Dacia is about to launch a bigger SUV called Bigster.
Think Nissan Qashqai rival. So it needs to make a noise to get noticed in such a competitive segment — and Dakar is marketing gold.
Boss Denis Le Vot said: “When we relaunched the brand, we asked ourselves what a Dacia should be, and we wrote, ‘robust and outdoor, essential but cool’.
“Once we had that we said, ‘F***, this is the Dakar!’ So we stopped everything we did before. Like football in Italy, rugby in England, and said we would do one thing big and do it properly.
“Dakar is a new adventure for Dacia and will bring it to the next level.”
The desert racer is powered by a 3-litre V6 twin-turbo sending 360hp to all four wheels. The suspension travel is hilarious. The tyres are 37 INCHES. The roll cage is aerospace steel.
This thing has more wires and software code than a SpaceX rocket. Probably.
The fuel tank is 520 litres. Ten times bigger than a Sandero.
British team Prodrive has an army of 62 engineers out here in Saudi as support crew.
Obviously, Dacia doesn’t sell a car with a juicy V6 in it, so they tapped up their friends at Nissan and transplanted engines from the Nissan Z sports car.
Today is day six of this remarkable race and Dacia is still in the mix.
Superstar driver Nasser al-Attiyah dropped from second to seventh after a puncture on yesterday’s 258-mile stage.
But there’s still a long, long way to go.
Five-time champ Nasser told me: “Anything can happen on Dakar. We’ll keep pushing. We have the tools to win.”
Team-mate Sebastien Loeb flipped his buggy on stage three and was forced to retire with a damaged roll cage.
Last year’s winner Carlos Sainz rolled his Ford M-Sport Raptor the day before.
Like I said, toughest race in the world.
3 rally cars
2 race trucks
(carrying spares)
3 crew vans
5 support trucks
9 motorhomes
37 tents
62 personnel
THE millionaire boss of Prodrive has bought a £24k Dacia Duster.
David Richards, the motorsport guru behind Dacia’s Dakar project, said: “At the farm we have a Subaru that’s 17 years old. That’s out. The Duster arrives next week.
“I will use it some days. My wife will use it. The people around the farm will use it. When the kids come home at weekends, they will use it. We just need a couple of baby seats for the grandchildren.
“I’ve followed the Dacia brand for a few years now, I’ve seen the product they are delivering, and the popularity of it.
“It’s a value for money product. So many cars nowadays keep adding items on to them that are possibly unnecessary and you don’t want to pay for them. Duster seemed to be a practical car to have.”
Prodrive famously turned Subaru into the darling of performance car fans, steering Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Petter Solberg to world rally glory. Can history repeat itself with Dacia?
Richards said: “I think there is a very similar potential here with Dacia. If we can do what we did with Subaru back in those days, we had the marketing support around it, and then we can expand it beyond Dakar.
“Dacia has all the ingredients for an incredible future – and hopefully motorsport can play a strong part in that.”
0 Всім відомо, якої шкоди завдають гризуни в господі. Але не всі знають, якими народними методами можна позбутися непрошених гостей. Подробиці Гризуни не люблять запаху риб’ячого жиру, мускатного горіха, камфори, гвоздики, а також гасу. Ганчірки, просочені гасом, риб’ячим жиром, камфорою розкладіть по периметру погреба або в нори. Перевірений засіб – попіл. Відро цього ненависного для […]
