Armchair Supporter

Patrick Roberts was delighted to watch his team-mates setting a new unbeaten record and is keen to return to help the Hoops continue that impressive run.

- Mark Henderson

GIVEN he had been involved from the very start of Celtic’s record-breaking 63-game unbeaten run, it was rough justice that Patrick Roberts was confined to the couch with only his pet pooch, Fred, as company when the Hoops made history against St Johnstone.

The opening salvo in this sensational sequence of results came in the final match of the 2015/16 season, with Roberts one of seven different scorers in a 7-0 destruction of Motherwell. Now, 16 months on, he would have loved to have been part of proceedings in Perth as Celtic eclipsed their own 100-year British record of domestic matches without defeat.

An untimely hamstring injury put paid to that, however, and he had to be content with watching on TV as Brendan Rodgers’ side swept aside the Saints in another dominant display to maintain their staggering levels of consistency and hit the headline across the world.

Although he had missed out on the milestone moment, the English youngster could look back with pride on the part he had played during this remarkable run, and he told the Celtic View it had been based on two fundamentals – belief and unity.

“We have gone into most games confident, and even if we have gone one or two-nil down, we never dropped our heads,” he said in an exclusive interview. “We’ve kept going and we are a strong attacking force, with players who can come on and make a difference which is crucial. Every game, we go into it confident that we’ll win.

“We have a good togetherness and we all get on well, and that comes out on the pitch. We just enjoy playing our football together and the more you win games, the more confident you get and the better it is to be around here.