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McDonald: No such thing as an easy game for Celtic

Last updated : 07 February 2009 By Mikbhoy
Gordon Strachan gave Scott McDonald and Shunsuke Nakamura the opportunity to fly out early to Yokohama for next week's World Cup qualifier between Japan and Australia but whilst Naka accepted gratefully the striker from Oz turned down the opportunity to join him on that early flight to the Far East.

"I chose to stay for the game." said Scott, "I was given the option by the manager but it's different for Naka. He was going home to his family, but I'd have been sitting in a hotel room in Japan by myself for a few days. I'm always hungry for more goals and it would be nice to get on the score-sheet tomorrow against Queen's Park. After the Australia match, I'll have almost 60 hours to recover for the Rangers game so it shouldn't be a problem. It would have been a lot worse had I been going to Australia. It's only half the journey and the derby game will take care of itself."

Scott McDonald in action for Australia
Today's cup-tie against the Spiders from Hampden is, of course, also a Glasgow derby but although the second division side are not quite the same proposition as the Huns they will still be given respect from the Celtic team and management and Scott insisted that the team will not let their focus waver "It's the same kind of pressure," he said. "It's a different competition but it's another 90 minutes and a game of football that we want to win. The expectations will be high for us but games don't always work out like that. In the last few cup games at home, the crowds haven't been as big as they normally are but that's just something we have to deal with. It doesn't matter if you're playing in front of 60,000 fans or five people in a park, you should be giving your all."

McDonald says that, no matter how it looks on paper, in reality there are no easy games for Celtic "It's always difficult, no matter who we play." he said, "It will be a one-off for Queen's Park and I'm sure their players will be out to prove a point against us. These guys are part-timers and although they play at Hampden every week, there's never as big a crowd as there will be tomorrow. There is going to be a decent atmosphere. Regardless of who we are playing, we always want to go out and start with a bang, It was the same against Hibs the other week. We'd handled the disappointment of losing to Aberdeen and we bounced back. Tomorrow, we want to go out and try to kill the game early. We will try to do that and show a lot of respect to Queen's Park at the same time."