Celtic maintained their five-point lead at the top of the SPFL Premiership last night with a pretty resounding 3-0 win at McDiarmid Park over St.Johnstone.
The game was effectively over after 26 minutes. But what a 26 minutes they were.
The men in hoops were quite simply mesmeric as we produced relentless attacking football, created countless chances and scored three goals in what was our best passage of play in months.
Reverting back to 3-5-2 with Ajer coming back into the centre of defence, James Forest returning on the right and Edouard back in from the start to partner Griffiths there was only ever going to be one winner on a rain-lashed night in Perthshire.
Ntcham headed in the first from a Forrest cross after only six minutes in a goal that featured some great build-up play involving the front pairing of Griffiths and Edouard.
The second was a superb drive into the far corner of the net by Forrest on 20 mins for his 15th goal of the season and the third duly arrived six minutes later as Griifhts finished sublimely after a fabulous cross from Greg Taylor.
And that was that. The rest of the game sort of petered out as they often do after one team has a whirlwind first half an hour or so.
We should actually have had more goals in the opening 26 minutes as Taylor and Griffiths were both denied by good saves from the home keeper Zander Clark and McGregor and Edouard both had fine efforts zip just past not to mention Grififths directing a header wide which looked goal bound in the opening moments of the game.
Outside of that new signing Patryk Klimala got a run out in the dying embers and looked lively and Max Baur also came on at half time for the struggling Jozo Simunovic as the formation went to a 4-4-2.
Mikey Johnston replaced Leigh Griffiths in the last 20 mins or so but had to hobble off much to the displeasure of manager Neil Lennon and it could be an ACL injury which may finish his season sadly.
That aside there were also claims of a bottle being thrown by our support at saints keeper Zander Clark but TV replays have filed these under spurious at best.
It was all in all a fine nights work and required as Rangers predictably swatted away Ross County 2-0 at Ibrox.
And it means we maintain our five-point lead on 61 points with our goal difference stretched to a six-goal advantage.
It’s also the beginning of a punishing away schedule that sees us visit Hamilton Accies on Sunday before moving from south to north Lanarkshire to play third-placed Motherwell at Fir Park next Wednesday.
I’ve dedicated a whole other article to our next game against Brian Rice’s Accies as well as the aforementioned schedule of not just away games but games, in general, we face in February and beyond.
It’s safe to say that it’ll be all hands to the pump from here on out.
....Always A Tim! 