Stopping The 10

Tom Boyd was named as Celtic captain 20 years ago this week– just in time for the most important, not to mention unique, league campaign in the club’s history

- Joe Sullivan

IT was 20 years ago this summer that Celtic prepared for a season like no other. This wasn’t a campaign that Celtic wanted to win – it was one that Celtic HAD to win.

Rangers had lifted the previous nine league titles, equalling the record of Jock Stein’s Celtic side of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. For the sake of the success-starved but faithful support and that of the Lisbon Lions and their Quality Street gang heirs, the Celtic side of 1997/98 just had to win the title, life would have been unbearable otherwise.

There was, of course, the chance that one of the other eight sides from outwith the Glasgow’s big two may have prevailed but that hadn’t been achieved for 14 years and the odds were so slight it was negligible.

This was a two-horse race in a two-horse town and coming second was simply not an option for Celtic.

Missing from the previous season would be Paolo Di Canio, Jorge Cadete, Andreas Thom, Peter Grant and Gordon Marshall, and the Celts had also parted company with Pierre van Hooijdonk midway the previous term.

The biggest shock of all, though, was that manager, Tommy Burns, a man who knew that the Ibrox run had to be stopped had also gone. He also knew, however, that he paid the ultimate price for not stopping the Ibrox run from reaching nine.

In came Dutchman, Wim Jansen as manager, an old adversary of Celtic’s from his playing days for Feyenoord in the 1970 European Cup final – and his arrival, like those many in the East End of Glasgow was derided in the press.

New players came in over the course of the campaign as well – Regi Blinker, Harald Brattbakk, Craig Burley, Stephane Mahe, Jonathan Gould, Darren Jackson, Marc Rieper, Henrik Larsson and Paul Lambert.