Celtic on this Day – Christopher Jullien’s goal and Fraser Forster’s brilliance leaves James Tavernier ‘disappointed’ in the 2019 Glasgow Derby League Cup Final…
8 December 2019
Celtic 1-0 theRangers
Despite surviving an onslaught from theRangers for the majority of the 97 minutes, Celtic, like so often this century managed to find a way. In doing so, Neil Lennon’s side triumphed their fourth straight Scottish League Cup, Celtic’s 19th in their illustrious history and an incredible 10 domestic titles in a row — historic stuff.
Celtic with their only shot on target grabbed the game’s solitary goal courtesy of towering French defender Christopher Jullien. The goal was a major talking point as TV cameras indicated that his foot was marginally offside. With no VAR in place five years ago in Scottish football, we will never know if Jullien was off, or Helander did indeed play him on.
It was a significant moment for Neil Lennon who had never won the Scottish League as a manager before that monumental victory against Steven Gerrard’s serial losers. Lennon became only the second manager in Scotland to have ever won all three domestic trophies as both a player and a manager. The other? Billy McNeill.
Undoubtedly, Celtic rode their luck and had to rely upon the heroic Fraser Forster whose individual performance single handedly [quite literally]won Celtic the trophy. The big Englishman’s display is possibly the best goalkeeping performance by a Celtic shotstopper of all-time. Was it better than his famous Barcelona outing? The penalty save from Morelos might just edge it in favour of this game back in 2019.
Willie Collum awarded the Ibrox club a penalty three minutes after Jullien opened the scoring. 18 year-old Hoops full-back Jeremie Frimpong was sent-off for denying a goalscoring opportunity. Amazingly, theRangers skipper James Tavernier, who had been their main penalty taker over the years whilst gaining a lot of practice during that timeframe, bizarrely passed the ball onto Alfredo Morelos.
The Colombian once again failed from the spot, meaning he had now gone 10 Glasgow Derby matches without scoring. When evaluating this specific game, analysis of Scott Arfield’s shocking tackle on Ryan Christie moments after the penalty miss seems to have been erased from scrutiny. If there had been VAR, the game would have finished 10 v 10.
Notably, it was Odsonne Edouard substitute appearance who changed the course of the final. When he came on, it gave the entire Celtic end of Hampden a massive lift. Eddy hadn’t featured for Celtic in the build-up to the League Cup final, and it was a surprise he was in the squad. Subsequently, Lennon with little options at his disposal opted to start the inexperienced Lewis Morgan up front — a tactical decision that unsurprisingly had no material impact on the game whatsoever.
Despite theRangers dominance, passing up umpteen chances, mainly through Morelos, Mikey Johnston had a huge chance to seal the match and ease some nerves, but fluffed his lines in front of goal.
Disappointed
However, Celtic hung on and clinched another trophy win in an era of utter domination. The 1-0 victory over theRangers was also the Hoops’ 31st domestic cup match unbeaten.
Post-match speaking to BT Sport, Neil Lennon said that, “Fraser Forster was outstanding. He made some unbelievable saves, world class saves. I didn’t even celebrate it [the goal]. I was too wrapped up in how we were playing and how we were going to get a proper foothold in the game. We weren’t great today but we still won and that’s what cup football is all about.”
A sickened Steven Gerrard gave his thoughts, “I thought we were really good, we performed well. But we got one big moment wrong. We never defended a set-piece. Now, there’s a good possibility two or three of them were offside, but we’ve still got to defend it better.”
Celtic’s starting XI on this day 8 December 2019; Forster, Frimpong, Jullien, Ajer, Hayes, Brown, McGregor, Forrest, Christie, Elyounoussi, Morgan.
Here are the match highlights…
Conor Spence
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The best bit of that video of the League Cup Final is the coupons on the sevvies players at full time.