Celtic made it six straight Scottish Premiership wins yesterday as they got by a well organised and determined Kilmarnock team who are now starting to show some of the form of last season under new manager Angelo Alessio.
With an unusual 1pm Sunday kick-off after the exertions away in France on Thursday night’s Europa League game, Neil Lennon surprisingly only made two changes to the starting line-up with Moritz Bauer coming in for Hatem Elhamed at right-back and Olivier Ntcham for Mohamed Elyounoussi.
We dominated from the get-go and James Forrest – somewhat anonymous in recent weeks – produced a fine display as he constantly terrorised the Killie back-line and rained down shots at their keeper Laurentiu Branescu who himself was in top form.
Killie took a shock lead completely against the run of play through Eamonn Brophy on 33 mins as he turned Jullien and Ajer inside out from the edge of the box before unleashing a rasping strike that flew past Fraser Forster.
But one minute before half time Celtic were back on equal terms as that man Odsonne Edouard headed in from close range after a fantastic cross from the left from James Forrest.
In the second half, Celtic poured it on and got their just deserves with Bauer releasing a lovely reverse ball into the box for French Eddy to make it 2-1 on 53 mins and then four mins later Ryan Christie scuffed home the third from close range after Branescu had clawed away a point-blank header from Forrest.
And that was it………or was it?
In the last ten minutes Scott Brown had a rush of blood that saw a fresh air kick outside the box followed up by a mistimed sliding challenge on Osman Sow that led to a penalty that was well saved by Fraser Forster who not long before that had saved another rasper by Brophy from outside the box by touching it just over.
In the dying embers, James Forrest raced clear and crashed one off the post and was once again denied a goal in a performance that deserved one at the very least.
So that was that. Another three points and 18 from 18 so far this season.
Elsewhere Rangers kept up their challenge with a 4-0 win at St Johnstone, Aberdeen remained in touch with a 2-0 win at Livingston, Motherwell’s impressive form deserted them in a surprise 2-1 loss at home to Ross County, St.Mirren and Hamilton Accies served up a 0-0 stinker in Paisley with both underlining their credentials as strong relegation candidates.
In the other Sunday match, Paul Heckingbottom looks to be edging ever closer to the exit door at Hibs with his reign taking another prosaic turn as his team threw a 1-0 lead away at home to a struggling Hearts side under the ongoing management of the mediocre Craig Levein. The finals score was 2-1 to the Jambos with ex-Celt Aaron Hicky netting a deflected winner late on.
Now we move onto Wednesday night in the League Cup.
We’re at home to Partick Thistle who are, to say the least struggling.
Thistle are rooted to the bottom of the Scottish Championship with only two points from six games and were routed 3-0 at home to fellow strugglers Dunfermline Athletic on Saturday.
This came only three days after they dismissed their manager, ex-Celt Gary Caldwell who had been in the post for eleven months, most of it spent fighting relegation.
His replacement looks likely to be Ayr Utd’s charismatic Ian McCall, a veteran of club management who has been at Thistle before and is local to the area as any visit to pubs in west end’s Byers Road on Saturday nights will testify.
Off the field Thistle have been embroiled in chaos for months.
Their board was effectively sacked and completely replaced over the summer with a potential sale to a consortium faltering also and this led to lottery winner Colin Weir pulling finding from the club which means plans for a multi-million pound youth academy have gone with him. A farce basically.
We’ll be huge favourites and if we can as expected progress then it’s likely we’ll be in the draw with Rangers who are away to Livingston. The matches between Hearts and Aberdeen at Tynecastle and Hibs visting Kilmarnock are more difficult to predict with Wednesday perhaps the last chance saloon for Paul Heckingbottom.
After that, we visit Heckingbttom’s Hibs at Easter Road for an early kick-off on Saturday that is of course if he’s still there.
....Always A Tim! 