It’ll have been a difficult week for the players, losing a figure as important and integral to the club as Jimmy Bell is bound to have had an effect on the preparations for what will be the biggest game in some of our players’ careers.
From hanging the kits up on the pegs to folding the players’ warm up gear on the benches, every individual in that famous changing room will feel the sizeable hole left by this week’s sad news, James Tavernier in particular having spent his years as skipper with Jimmy putting his captains armband on for him.
In Allan McGregor and Steven Davis though, we have two players who have been there and got the t-shirt before and their experience will be invaluable as we look to do what would have been unthinkable back in August, if ever there was a fitting tribute for Jimmy – a man who saw everything in his time at the club – it would be to overcome the 1-0 deficit and make it to the Europa League final.
For all that we might not know who exactly is lining up, the team selection and substitutions against Celtic give us a half decent clue, however, there is no doubt as to what our game plan will be – on the front foot from the first whistle.
We saw against Braga in the last round what happened when we applied early pressure and got the crowd going, the opposition buckled, Red Bull Leipzig are no mugs but, as we saw on Monday, their defeat to Borussia Mönchengladbach showed that they are far from infallible – they looked clueless when Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s surprise tactics caught them out in the first leg let’s see how they cope with the cauldron of Ibrox and not being given any time to settle on the ball.