Late decision not good for fans

With less than an hour to go before kick-off, calling a game off is a bad thing for the fans that have travelled up. With an early kick-off time, it would have been a very early start for the fans so to hear the game won’t go ahead is going to be a kick in the teeth.

A frozen pitch is the reason for the call off and obviously player safety is important.

At least it is better for Rangers fans than what they suffered at Tannadice when the game was abandoned at half-time.

This time, their match day tickets will be valid for when the game is rescheduled.

Both teams were entering the match with an air of optimism. Rangers were looking to open up a 13 point gap at the top of the SPL whereas St Johnstone were hoping to follow up a 5-1 demolishing of Hibs in midweek.

If Celtic win their match at home to Dundee United, the gap will be back to seven points but of course, that is asking a lot of Celtic.

St Johnstone have only played 23 games this season whereas some clubs have played 25 so by the end of this weekend, the Perth club will be 3 games behind some clubs.

There has been no announcement yet of when the game will be played.

Neither side has a fixture this midweek but that may be too early to reschedule the match and Rangers may prefer to have a blank week in the build up to the visit of Celtic to Ibrox next Sunday.

Is this the only way Celtic could cut the gap?

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Big freeze still hitting Cup ties

The last time WeKnowSFA checked, rules for cup-ties state that only players signed in time to have played in the original match are able to be selected. As of now, Celtic have made two new signings in this window so far. Jos Hooiveld is definitely not available for the re-arranged tie but it will have to be seen when Ki Sung Yueng was eventually registered by the SFA.

That is not really the issue, the problem would lie in the amount of players Celtic ship out before the tie is actually played.

Landry N’Guemo is away at the African Cup of Nations (which concludes at the end of January, so he may be back in time for this tie to be finally played) but transfer speculation persists around a number of Celtic players.

Gary Caldwell and Barry Robson are first team players who appear to be on their way out of the club.

Willo Flood and Chris Killen have not featured in any great way for Celtic this season but they too may be on their way out of the club before this match takes place. They may have found themselves in the squad for this match at Cappielow.

With Scott McDonald also expected to be out for around ten days or so with a hernia operation, a midweek cup tie next week could stretch Celtic’s squad a little bit.

The players mentioned above would equate to 6 squad players being unavailable, with the possibility of only one new recruit being made available for the match. However, Darren O’Dea has returned on loan from Reading and the Irishman should be considered good enough to step in if called upon.

One benefit it about it being the Scottish Cup is that only five substitutes are required, meaning Celtic only have to have a squad of 16 for the match.

This should not be seen as an excuse; Tony Mowbray should be more than capable of putting a strong enough team on the park without these players but the manager may have to juggle his squad around a bit.

With a league game against Kilmarnock to fit in and then a midweek league match (which may be in doubt if the cup ties continue to be called off) the following week, Celtic will soon hit a busy run of fixtures.

It is only short term though, so it may not strengthen boss Tony Mowbray’s hand in getting more recruits in.

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