Celtic bounced back from Thursday night’s embarrassing 4-1 hammering by a depleted Sparta Prague by inflicting the same scoreline on Motherwell at Fir Park.
With the home side coming in on the back of two straight victories and four wins in five many fancied them to add to the Bhoys woes but a double from the in-form Mohamed Elyounoussi in the first 27 mins put paid to that.
A fantastic turn and strike by Albian Ajeti could cannoned off the post and was subsequently turned in by the Norwegian winger and then he scored in his second on the 27 mins mark after some fantastic footwork in the box by Tom Rogic.
It should have been three-nil and game over when a fantastic sweeping move ended with Ryan Christie scuffing it over the bar but as has been the case recently Celtic went missing in the second half.
Motherwell came close to scoring on several occasions and eventually did via a header from Declan Gallagher on 72 mins.
However any hopes of a revival by the hosts were dashed four minutes later when Elyounoussi headed home his hattrick after a pinpoint cross from sub Hatem Elhamed.
Late on subs Odsonne Edouard and Olivier Ntcham combined with the former setting up the latter to stroke home the fourth on 86 mins and that was that.
Considering recent events a great three points and decent performance going into the international break.
There’s still cause for concern at the back though.
Shane Duffy was finally dropped with Kris Ajer coming back in to partner Nir Bitton in the middle of a back four but the Israeli internationalist struggled to match Gallagher in the air several times and just isn’t a real centre back.
The midfield is also still a concern with Brown’s passing poor and Callum McGregor has been way below the high standards he’s set himself in the past four seasons.
Elsewhere Rangers smashed a pathetic Hamilton Accies 8-0 at Ibrox.
That leaves us nine points and a mammoth thirteen goals behind the light blues in the league.
Yes, we’ve played two games less but when will we ever get to make them up is the question?
Certainly not this year.
We play Hibs away when we return from international duty a week on Saturday.
After a flying start to the season suddenly they are struggling having suffered a shock Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to relegated Hearts and then gone down tamely 2-0 at Pittodrie on Friday evening in the league.
We then have five league games in December four of which are at home.
Next up for Rangers is a home tie with Aberdeen and then they have six league games in December with four away.
If both clubs win all of their ties then we go into the next derby game on January 2nd twelve points behind albeit having played three games less.
Simply put we need to keep winning and hope they start dropping points.
Unless we somehow win our final three Europa League games which would include victories away in Prague and in Milan then we’re out of Europe whilst Rangers have seven points from nine so far in their group and effectively just need one more win to secure a Last 32 berth in the competition.
That would free up midweeks for us to catch-up next year so there is some hope and actually going out of continental competition isn’t such a bad thing.
Otherwise, the fixture pile-up would be relentless.
There’s no doubt the Boli incident has hurt us and having to paly our last seasons Scottish Cup similarly so.
That should have been dealt with before this campaign began and it not being has resulted in us being so far behind in the league.
No doubt the SFA and the clubs were hoping for crowds to be back in grounds etc but that has proved to be nothing more than a pipe dream and we should have gotten it sorted the week before returning to league action as opposed to playing friendlies with Hibs and Ross County but alas there is nothing that can be done about it now.
If we can motor to victories in all of our remaining domestic fixtures of 2020 then we should enter the Ibrox encounter in good shape with more silverware and a quadruple treble in the bag not to mention 18 more league points.
We just have to hope that they hit a few speed bumps on the road over the festive period as otherwise the pressure on us to win the game against them will be like no other in recent memory.
As for the aforementioned three remaining Europa League games it should be seen as a chance to give game time to the likes of Barkas, Taylor, Soro, Turnbull, Klimala, Griffiths and the returning Mikey Johnstone.
All could do with the game time and they have become matches which in the grand scheme of things don’t really mean much.
The focus now has to be domestic.
....Always A Tim! 