Liam Scales believes a Double will silence the doubters who say Celtic are disintegrating.
The Parkhead side travels to Hampden Park hoping to defeat Rangers and win their second trophy of the season after winning the Premiership for the third time in a row. Celtic’s foundations appear strong at the end of the season, and Scales wants his squad to win more titles. Brendan Rodgers’ side lost the Viaplay Cup against Kilmarnock in the final 16 at the start of the season. Celtic were chastised for that defeat and other poor performances throughout the season, which caused them to fall behind in the title chase after losing a comfortable lead.
Scales says it would be satisfying to end the season on a Double high after some of the stick. He admitted: “That would be amazing. The season didn’t start very well getting knocked out of the League Cup early on. A lot of the narrative was about us crumbling a bit. And it would just be great to put that to bed with a double.”
Rodgers pointed out some of the criticism to his players and Scales continued: “Yeah he did, he showed us that before the game. Looking back, I didn’t really realise that at the time as I sort of keep away from that sort of stuff. But we were criticised from all angles. It was going on in the background for me, but it will be great to get it over the line this weekend and prove people wrong I suppose, which is always a nice thing to do.”
Belief was maintained in the dressing room, and levels increased when it counted. Scales stated, “We didn’t need anyone to tell us that there were times when we weren’t performing as well as we could have.” We could feel it for ourselves. We do not need to hear it from pundits. We understand when we’re good or awful. There were times when we struggled a little.
“It was the first season back for the manager and a new sort of style and it just took a little bit of time to get used to it. Over the last few weeks, we’ve hit a good run and, hopefully, we can continue that into the Final.”
“You can take positive things from those results, but if you get carried away and think we’re going to stroll it then we’ll lose the game 100 percent. It’s about taking away the positives from those games [against Rangers] and trying to replicate that on the weekend and, hopefully, get the result we want.”