WITH 50 games under his belt for Celtic across all competitions this season, Scott Brown has embodied the will-to-win which drives the club’s enduring success.

Despite anchoring the Hoops midfield, and therefore playing further down the pitch than he might have done earlier in his career, the skipper still came up with five goals during the 2019/20 campaign, in turn doing his bit all over the pitch for Neil Lennon’s side.

“I’ve just been delighted to play, to be honest,” said Brown in conversation with Celtic TV. “It’s a great bunch of lads here, I’m sitting a bit deeper than I ever have done, but I’ve managed to somehow grab five goals this season as well. I’ll take that, but it’s great for us to get this over the line.

"For us, given how well we’ve played over the course of the whole season, that shows you why we are champions. We’ve been the best team in Scotland over the last nine seasons.

“When I first came to Celtic, I never saw any of this coming, even in my wildest dreams. To have won the Treble Treble, to win nine-in-a-row, that’s incredible. We were going to a semi-final at Hampden as well, which meant there was a possibility of a Quadruple Treble as well. For me, when I first signed here, I wanted to win trophies. I’ve done that, and I’ve enjoyed every single moment of it.”

Clinching nine-in-a-row makes Brown the first Celtic captain to do so since club legend Billy McNeill did so in the 1960s and ‘70s under Jock Stein. When Brown lifted his first title of the current run, he told the Celtic View magazine that it was ‘our turn to go a wee run’ – and what a run that has been!

“This is just a wee run,” added Brown. “All the lads have been fantastic – the players that we played with throughout the seasons, the managers, the backroom staff, we’ve all worked hard together to get to this place that we’re in.

“The club’s in a great place, and we just feel that we were getting stronger and stronger as the season went on. We’re looking forward to next season now, and we need to make sure that we push ourselves, we go again and try and be even better than we were this season.”

Brown: Our great form this season shows why we’re champions