It was tough, Probably tougher than expected and there were a few hairy moments but Celtic did what they always do in cup matches these days and won.
That’s a pretty incredible 22 straight victories in domestic cup competitions for Celtic now as a seventh domestic trophy was obtained.
Aberdeen were competitive, some would say excessively so as they got into Celtic’s face from the get-go. We were happy to match them and in amongst all of that the occasional passage of football broke out. Tom Rogic cracked one off the outside of the post from distance with a low howitzer in the opening exchanges.
The first half was marred by a horrible injury to ex-Celtic winger Gary Mackay-Steven just after the half-hour mark when he was rendered unconscious by a clash of heads as a result of a head clash with Dedryk Boyata. The Belgium defender had to go off for stitches pitchside but it was horrible to see GMS lying motionless, face-down on the deck before his limp body was ill-advisedly pulled over by Aberdeen striker Sam Cosgrove who was obviously unaware as to the extent of the injury.
I honestly feared the worst especially when you saw the replay and he really did take the full impact of big Dedryk’s head. Thankfully after several mins, he was stretchered off after apparently regaining consciousness. It probably would have been advisable for Boyata to have gone off as well but in a throwback to the 80’s he was simply bandaged up and thrown back on again with a new shirt.
Six minutes injury time was understandably added on and with only a minute of that left to go Ryan Christie – who spent last season on loan at the Dons – returned to haunt his old side as the man with the bandaged head Boyata played a long ball through the middle to Christie who broke into the box and fired a right foot shot at Joe Lewis before netting at the second attempt with his left foot when the ball rebounded to him.
The second half was more of the same until 52 mins as Celtic were awarded a controversial penalty when Dominic Ball headed down onto his hand just outside the box. It really was a gift and Scott Sinclair, usually pretty trustworthy from the spot, stepped up but it was a poor effort resulting in Joe Lewis touching it over the bar. Justice on this occasion was definitely served.
Boyata was finally substituted just after the hour mark and was replaced by Jozo Simunovic who we haven’t seen in quite some time.
Not long after we were almost wishing we hadn’t seen him for a lot longer as in an attempt to clear his lines he cracked the ball off his own post nearly delivering an unlikely equaliser to the men in red in the process.
Celtic had chances to kill the game as Sinclair broke free and raced through on Lewis only to fluff his lines and with us queuing up after a break late on late on Edouard choose to go it alone when he had multiple options he could have set-up instead.
For their part, Aberdeen stuck on multiple strikers and huffed and puffed a lot but ultimately became frustrated and instead of firing in attempts at our goal elected to increasingly throw the hammers instead.
Scott Brown was put on, on 64 mins to give them a taste of their own medicine and predictably they didn’t like it as he put in a few meaty challenges of his own and taunted the opposition players as they got increasingly reckless and desperate.
At fulltime Mikel Lustig also let the Aberdeen players and coaching staff know who’s boss which resulted in post-match complaints from Dons manager Derek McInnes and captain Graeme Shinnie with them claiming our players ‘lacked class’. Cleary they have forgotten about the antics from the final game of last season at Celtic Park by their very own Shaleum Logan who openly taunted the Celtic players and fans at the final whistle. Funny that.
Anyway, that’s seven trophies in a row for Celtic and Brendan Rodgers, as well as our 14th trophy in seven and a half seasons bringing our overall trophy hall to magnificent 106 and counting. We’ve also won four out of the last five League Cups. Strange to think when I was growing up we never won it for 15 years and it was regarded as ou ‘bogey tournament’. Not anymore.
Form-wise we are now unbeaten in eight matches in all competitions with seven wins and a draw and haven’t lost a domestic match since going down 2-1 at Rugby Park to Kilmarnock way back on Sunday 23rd September. We’ve won nine and drawn one since then.
The real standout stat though is our defensive record as we have conceded only one goal in our last eight matches in all comps and domestically none in our last six and only two in our last ten.
That really confirms how big an improvement Filipe Benokivc has brought to the side since his loan move and underlines why Leicester City parted with £13 million for him this past summer. He oozes composure and class and just looks head and shoulders above any of our other central defensive options. Fingers crossed we can keep a hold of him until the end of the season.
Next up we return to league action in a mere 48hrs as we visit a Motherwell team who are in very indifferent form. Indeed only last weekend they thumped Aberdeen 3-0 at home only to go down meekly 2-0 away at Livingston on Saturday.
For our players, it’s been an exhausting period with our visit to Fir Park being our fourth game in only eleven days and not to mention the international break seeing most of our players also involved. James Forrest looked particularly out of sorts the other day as he had a raging battle with Dons fullback Maz Lowe and couldn’t really get anything going. Tom Rogic also failed to make much impact despite his early dazy cutter nearly opening the scoring. I suspect there will be changes on Wednesday with Simunovic, Scott Brown, Ntcham and Leigh Griffiths all possibly coming in from the start.
Until then we have another piece of silverware in the bag and a mythical treble-treble really is a goer.
Those glory, glory days.
....Always A Tim! 