After the exploits of their comfortable 2-0 win over AIK in the first leg of the Europa League play-off on Thursday night unsurprisingly Celtic switched it up for the visit of Hearts at 3pm yesterday afternoon.
Craig Gordon, Mikey Johnston and Odsonne Edouard all dropped to the bench whilst Jozo Simunovic was rested for the day with new signing Fraser Forster, Nir Bitton, Olivier Ntcham and the near-mythical figure of Vakoun Issouf Bayo all starting.
For Bayo, it was his first-ever start with the only time we’d seen him previously being in a couple of fleeting substitute appearances last season since a heralded ÂŁ2 million move from Slovak side Dunajská Streda back in late January.
His lack of game time had meant sighting were becoming as rare as bigfoot but yesterday he stepped up to the plate and then some.
As for the game as a whole Hearts were pretty meek. They usually are when they come to Celtic Park. Despite possessing arguably the third-best squad in the country they showed their standard complete lack of ambition as Craig Levein set them up to spoil and just negate us.
Craig points out that it worked for long spells of play but in between when it was working Celtic scored three goals with the pick of them being a rasping drive from Callum McGregor from outside the box that gave new Hearts keeper Joel Pereira no chance. That came nine minutes into the second half. Either side of it Bayo scored twice. Well at least at the moment he’s being credited for scoring twice.
His ‘first’ came just before the half-hour mark when he outmuscled Hearts skipper Christophe Berra from a cross over from James Forest and the ball ended up in the net. The replays failed to confirm it either way but the suspicion is it had more to do with Berra’s thigh than Bayo. His second looked like a great finish on the hour mark as he got across Craig Halkett from an Ajer cross though again replays seemed to suggest it may have been Halkett who actually made the connection. Still, you’ve got to be in it to win it and he was in the right place to harass both defenders to make the errors in the first place. And for now credit for both goals remains with him and I’ll presume both Berra and Halkett are happy for him to keep them.
Later on, he was up like a salmon at the back post only for his header to come crashing back off the post for what could have been an unlikely hat-trick.
In the final ten mins, Scott Brown once again pressed the self-destruct button and conceded a penalty for a somewhat pointless obstruction on Hearts midfielder Sean Clare in the box though at the same time it looked like Christopher Jullien was wiped out by Uche Ikpeazu so in that respect we were unlucky.
Fraser Forster actually saved Conor Washington’s penalty though the Northern Ireland internationalist despatched the rebound meaning it wasn’t to be a fairytale return to Celtic Park for the big Englishman.
All in all, it was pretty comfortable.
There’s always a danger after a Thursday night game that you can be caught out in the following league game but Hearts lacked either the conviction or tactics to make that happen and as a result, it was a welcome stroll in the park for the men in hoops played in 28°C heat on a stunning late summers day.
Onto Thursday and we go to Stockholm with a 2-0 advantage. The Swedish champions were pretty useless when they visited Celtic Park last week, rarely venturing past the halfway line but are sure to come out all guns blazing for the home leg.
They defeated Ă–stersunds 3-1 away on Sunday and as a result, have gone second in the league, four points behind leaders DjurgĂĄrdens IF who they play away on Sunday. So that adds an interesting dynamic into the mix. If they lose that game they’ll be seven points behind DjurgĂĄrdens with only eight games remaining so it really will go a long way to deciding the title. You wonder if it could factor into their thinking for the game against us. Though that may just be wishful thinking on my part.
One thing is for sure and that’s that their top striker Tarik Elyounoussi will return from suspension and he’ll definitely be involved which will certainly add an attacking element they completely lacked against us. He limped off against Ă–stersunds but the feeling is that was precautionary.
After that’s out of the way we’ll then have the small matter of a visit to Ibrox.
Considering our last two performances there it goes without saying that we’ll have to do better.
But right now it’s difficult to really preview it. Domestically both sides have won all four games with the light blues scoring 12 goals and conceding two compared to our 17 goals scored and four conceded. Whilst in Europe, they are unbeaten in seven games thus far – five wins and two draws – whilst we’ve won five of our seven with a draw and a loss.
Neither side will have any big players missing save Rogic for Celtic with no known injury doubts or suspensions. Though of course that could all change after Thursday. Whilst we will have to return from Sweden, Rangers will entertain Legia Warsaw with their tie finely balanced after a 0-0 draw in the Polish capital last Thursday.
So a more accurate preview can probably wait until Friday morning by which time the dust will have settled on the Europa League playoff games and we’ll have a far better idea of where both teams stand.
There will also likely be some singing bedlam came the end of the week too with us currently linked to half a dozen left-backs.
We can cool it on the striker front though. Bayo is clearly a goal machine. An opposition own goal causing machine yes but they all count.
....Always A Tim! 