Despite the loss to Hibernian and the misdemeanour of the last few weeks, there has been one major shining light in Celtic’s season – David Turnbull.
In what was a rather depleted team today, Celtic’s summer signing stood up to the task – bettering the performances put in by the anonymous Tom Rogic and shyful Callum McGregor – as he put in a Man Of The Match performance against Hibs.
Acting as Celtic’s only real creative spark in the first-half, alongside the maziness of Mikey Johnston, it took until 80 minutes to break the Edinburgh outfit down, but after winning a free-kick on the edge of the box with some quick feet, Turnbull picked himself up, dusted himself down and bent a superb strike into the top corner from all of 25 yards.
He’s been in that good form recently that I think almost every Celtic fan expected him to score, anyway. The strike marked his fourth goal in five league games, and he he lived up to his newfound reputation as the ‘saviour’ to the season, only for his teammates to let him down at the back.
Reflecting on the game, Turnbull said on Sky Sports: “It’s a tough one to take for the boys, we have thrown it away. We thought we had it only to concede a silly free-kick which has ultimately cost us. As a team, for the first ten to twenty minutes we struggled to get into the box. But, once we started to get up the pitch with our passing, you could tell that we were much the better side; it is just a shame that we couldn’t quite get there in the end.”
He was full of praise for those who played on such short notice; Celtic’s Stephen Walsh, Armstrong Oko-Flex, Cameron Harper and Karamoko Dembele appeared after the COVID-19 saga that was announced the day before.
“I was delighted for the young boys like Cammy (Harper) and Mikey who has been out for a while, it has been a struggle for them and they came in and did well. Even those who came on such as Armstrong (Oko-Flex) all played their part”, Turnbull said.
“It’s been strange but we’ve just tried to get our heads around the current situation, we’re focusing on what we’ve been told to do and we’re going out to try and do it.”
Who knows – there may be no trophies come the end of the season – but atleast Celtic fans can take solace knowing how well Turnbull has done in his debut season at Paradise.