Tom English: Much Edu about nothing

IT'S HARD to know if Glenn Loovens rehearsed it in front of the mirror but when the Celtic defender was asked about his studs-up hit on Maurice Edu in last week's Old Firm clash he sauntered through the interrogation like a man who barely knew what we were talking about.

Edu? Oh yeah, he says. It was something and nothing. Too much is being made of it, he believes. People shouldn't doubt him, he insists. Check out his past and show him where the black marks are. His point is that the bad boy stuff doesn't exist and it doesn't exist because he is not the type of player who kicks people after the ball has gone. He's so blasé about it all that you want to get the DVD out to remind yourself of the incident. Yes, the studs were up. Yes, Edu went down. Yes, it looked like a well dodgy challenge.

But no, says Loovens. No great indiscipline at Feyenoord. No reputation for nastiness at Excelsior. No suggestion that he was dirty at De Graafschap. Not even in the hard environs of the Championship with Cardiff City was there talk of him having a touch of the assassin.

Last week there was anger at Ibrox at his tackle on Edu and in the days since there was confirmation that the incident would be studied by the authorities. If he gets a ban it won't kick-in until next season, so it's not exactly keeping him awake at night. But he's not expecting censure. No way, no how.

"I think everyone who knows me knows I am a hard player," he said on Friday, with a look of pure innocence. "I would be surprised if anything else happens to me because I was just a bit unlucky."

A bit unlucky? "I just went for the ball and really did nothing. I went for the ball and at some point my leg has to come down. Like I said I was a bit unlucky, but everyone who knows me knows I am not a dirty player. It wasn't deliberate. Not at all. It was just like I kicked the ball away and was a bit unlucky so I really don't know what all the fuss is about."

It's a fact of life in Glasgow. People make a fuss over football. Particularly if one player in green and white appears to kick out at a player in blue. Fuss and bother and computers overheating for all the cyber action. Did Loovens have a word with Edu? "I think when he came back on it was for a corner. I went to him and said 'are you all right?' and he said 'yes, I'm fine'. I said 'I'm sorry' and that was it."

For now, perhaps. Loovens strikes you as a guy who'd keep his composure even if his trousers were on fire, so a hubbub about a bad tackle is not likely to bother him unduly. He smiles cheerily through the questioning. Doesn't stop smiling even when the subject of today's arduous trip to Easter Road is brought up. Last time he was there he started the match and Celtic lost 2-0. The Squiggler and all that.

It has to be said, he didn't look all that clever at that stage of the season. Didn't look anything like as sure of his ground as he was at Cardiff, where they remember him as something of a colossus. Maybe that was to be expected. Glasgow can be a major culture shock for a foreign player, especially for one who is in and out of the team as he was. He's played 21 times for Celtic this season and he's happy enough with that. He'll play two more times before the campaign is done because Stephen McManus is injured and he's not coming back in time for the denouement at the weekend.

So it's Loovens and Gary Caldwell trying to stop the threat of Derek Riordan and Steven Fletcher.

"They proved against Rangers that they are a good team," he said. "We already lost there at the beginning of the season so we know we have to play well. It's a tough ground to go to. Everyone must be on top of their game. We just have to make sure we stop them playing and when we have the ball, we keep it. And to score a few goals would be nice. Every Celtic player needs to be big now because these are the games that are going to matter for the season and the title. We just need to make sure that every player is going to play their heart out."

With McManus out, Loovens has hit a rhythm these past weeks, looking strong in defence and dangerous as a goal-threat at the other end. "To be fair to him," says Gordon Strachan, "he's been really unfortunate. He's had the Scottish player of the year (Caldwell] and the Celtic and Scotland captain (McManus] in front of him. He's probably been the unluckiest player at the club this year. We keep watching him and saying 'what a good player you are' but there's a partnership there that's been about for a while and you tend to stay loyal to these partnerships. But he's prepared right, he's never said anything, he's just got on with it and he's been smashing for us for the last couple of games. A couple of million quid? For a 24-year-old, it's nothing. He's going to be a right good player. He's brave, doesn't take his eye off the ball. No moaning, no complaining. He should be happy."

Having scored against Dundee United on Tuesday, Loovens didn't watch the action from Easter Road on Wednesday. Part of the reason was that he doesn't have Setanta, so we're clearly not talking about an SPL addict here. Instead, he opted for a film while getting updates on the internet, pressing the refresh button every few minutes just to see if anybody had broken the deadlock.

Somebody did, of course and it was his brother, Ivo, who was first to notice it. At home in Rotterdam the alert Ivo texted to say that Riordan had curled in a beauty. "After that, I just checked the score to make sure."

He hasn't quite experienced this level of intensity in his football life but late-in-the-day drama is not an unfamiliar concept to him. "I was on loan once at Excelsior Rotterdam and we gave it away on the last day," he said of Excelsior's failed bid for promotion. "I am telling you it is not a good feeling so I am going to make sure it is not going to happen this time. We ended equal on points with Den Bosch and we lost on goal difference.

"I was also on loan for a few months at De Graafschap and we got relegated with that team after the play-offs and that was not a great feeling either. Maybe I'm a jinx."

He's smiling again. Shooting the breeze. There's pressure on Celtic and there's pressure on Rangers, he says. But you couldn't tell by looking at him. "We are intending to win our next two games and hopefully that will bring us our fourth title," he points out and there's not a lot of doubt there. If Strachan wants his men nice and calm before the big push on Sunday then the laid-back Loovens is setting the standard.