CELTIC blew Rangers away in the second Glasgow Derby of last season, the win took Celtic top for the first time that season, and they didn’t move from the summit for the rest of the campaign.
A brilliant Brace from Hatate saw the Hoops go 2-0 up in his first derby match in Scotland, then Liel Abada knocked in the third, putting Celtic 3-0 to the good at halftime.
Rangers were rather shocked with the performance on show, with Celtic ending their seven-game winless derby streak.
Reflecting on the night, Postecoglou admitted it was the first night that he truly believed that Celtic could march on and lift the league title in May.
Speaking on the Scottish Football Summer Sessions podcast, he said;
“That was the night I believed, not that I never believed, but that was the night thought. I knew it was a critical night, and if they had won that game and got four points ahead of us, I thought that’s a bridge too far; there’s no way they’re going to drop any more points against anyone else. Us winning home and away against them was going to be a tough ask, and we would have to be literally perfect. So that was a big night for us.
“What did it for me was not that we won, but the way that we played. This is on the back of, you know what it’s like when a record builds against you, we hadn’t beaten them for quite a while all these kinds of things, the longer they go on, the harder they are to break. So the fact we broke that cycle of us not getting results and winning against them, but the manner in which we played.
“We had Hatate and Matt O’Riley in their first derby game, Maeda literly got off a plane from Japan and came on at the end, Giakouamkis’ first impact in a big game.
“There were all these things that came out of that night, you’re right, the expectations of supporters went through the roof, but within here I that ‘okay, now we have a chance, we have a chance to actually win it’.”
Many fans also say this is the night they started to believe that Celtic could pull off what was labelled impossible. There was a long way to go in the season, but fans were confident. After Rangers dropped points and Celtic collected three from Ibrox, the league was Celtic’s to lose.
