There were two reasons why I was glad to hear the final whistle last night. One was that it was a very cold night and the warm bus home offered a certain attraction, but the other was that this was not a good performance in the second half, and following what happened at a certain other game the night before in the 7 minute added time, there was cause for concern that something similar could happen here.
However, nothing disastrous occurred and we retain our nine point lead. Ibrox is still freezing. They remain nine below in Govan.
The first half was effectively very good, with the second goal a particular gem of the type we want more of. Great pass from Anthony Ralston, great work from Liel Abada and Kyogu in the right place (he wasn’t always last night) to finish off. More of this please, Celtic!
The first goal was a fortunate o.g. but it was also deserved on pressure, and I almost lost count of the amount of times that the ball cross the goalmouth and no takers were around. The build up play was consistently good with the gloved O’Riley in particular doing well.
It was all looking good until we lost concentration and conceded a very stupid goal on the half time whistle. They always say that before and after half time are bad times to concede a goal, and so it proved last night. For some reason we never really got going. Livingston had a good spell, and even after Celtic re-asserted themselves, they never really looked like scoring.
Except of course, the time when we did score. The referee and linesman both thought it was a good goal and so did we, but someone miles away thought it wasn’t and we had the ludicrous, prolonged and predictable spectacle of VAR being allowed the run the show once again. There are two things that I would love to see about VAR – one is it working for once in favour of Celtic, and the other is a referee having the courage to use his metaphorical middle finger to it, and to say “No! I am going to stick to my decision!”.
But we won in the end. We were best served, I think, by Abada, O’Riley and the whole defence apart from their moment of switching off to allow Livi to score. Celtic’s forward play was not as good as it usually is, (possibly because some of our foreign players, the Japanese ones in particular, find it hard to cope with the extremes of a Scottish winter). The theme of the ball crossing the goalmouth and “no takers” continued, and once again, there was a remarkable reluctance to shoot on occasion.
Livi had some good players, and although they never really looked like equalising, at the time you never can tell, and full time came as a relief. They are far from the worst team in the SPL, and considering their almost total lack of support, you have to admire Mr Martindale’s achievements, if not always his tactics.
And now we have the Perth Saints at Parkhead on Saturday. Definitely not a game to take the foot off the pedal for! And let’s hope that Celtic make it easier for their fans than they did last night!
David Potter
The third thing: mic the men in black like they do in rugby. The fourth thing: show us the pictures that prove players are offside.
The differing views of fans. I thought that Kyogo was too often on his heels with the balls across the box, same at Aberdeen. I thought Jota had a good first half but I thought that O’Riley was well off his best last night and should have been hooked earlier. Starfelt was good throughout the game and Martindale deserves no credit with his only tactic being a punt up to No9 on the wing at halfway to knock down to no one, once it doesn’t work 7 times perhaps its time to try something else or actually have your players venture out of their own half to try and get onto the knockdown. Anti football , terrible officials and cold nights….Scottish football can be hard work sometimes.