Liam Scales has revealed that nobody at Celtic has thought about Rangers’ stadium woes and stressed that he and his teammates are focusing fully on how they can win every game they play next season. 

Ibrox will not be ready to host matches when the 2024/25 campaign gets underway next month due to delays to building work on the Copland Stand and it remains unclear where the Govan club will stage their early home fixtures. The ongoing uncertainty over where Philippe Clement’s side will play has been tipped to give Brendan Rodgers’ team an immediate advantage in the Premiership by many supporters and media pundits. 

However, centre-half Scales admitted that the defending Scottish champions are simply concentrating on being in peak condition for their opening league match against Kilmarnock at Parkhead on Sunday, August 4. “I don’t think it changes much for us,” he said. “It might change a bit for them. All we want to do is win every game. That’s always been the case. 

“If we focus on that then whatever happens outside doesn’t matter. It might change certain things for them, who knows? But our focus will be on us.”

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The Republic of Ireland internationalist helped Celtic to win their third consecutive Premiership and lift the Scottish Cup last term – but he confessed he would like the Glasgow giants to reclaim the League Cup next season and complete another treble. "There’s one competition we didn’t win last season that we would love to win that this time along with the league and the cup,” he said as he reflected on the League Cup defeat to Kilmarnock at Rugby Park last year. 

“It was a disappointing start to last season, going out of the League Cup. Obviously we’d want to go all the way in that as well. That’s the first trophy we can get our hands on and that’s what we’ll be looking to do. Looking back now, we were still building at that stage last season and there were a couple of injuries. It was a tough tie that. Kilmarnock went on and did really well. It was a tough place for everyone to go last season.

“We still feel we could have won that game. If we had played to our best levels we would have won. But now we’ve got the season under the new manager under our belts and we know what we have to do and how we have to play. We went to Killie on the day we won the league and it was a completely different game. A different team. The way we played, the flow was much better. If we can improve on that this season we should definitely do better.”

Scales added: “It’s been pretty much the same in training. We finished the season strongly and it’s just been a carry on from that. He (Rodgers) wants the same intensity and attitude from everyone. That’s what we’re going to do. 

“We expect to hit the ground running. We want to get a good pre-season in, there’s the tour (of USA) and a few friendly games so we should be fit and strong when it starts.”