GOALLESS SOULLESS TITLELESS
Hopeless finishing seals fate as Hoops’ run stutters to end
A CHAPTER in Celtic’s history has been closed.
The ending so painfully predictable, you barely had to bother reading the final lines to know how it turned out.
Now it’s up the Parkhead club to draft a new script and make sure the next segment doesn’t become a longer than necessary tale of sadness.
It was some run for Celtic: 465 weeks; 3256 days; nine titles and 10 other trophies added to the list, with an invincible season and quadruple Treble chucked in for good measure.
In years to come, it’s a decade that will be recounted with great pride.
However, today, it’s hard for anyone connected with the club, as well as the fans, to even think about those achievements.
The 10 is gone. The trophy and status is now with Rangers.
No matter what has happened before, that still hurts. Badly.
Celtic were losing it for a while. Yet it would have still hurt when confirmed and Tannadice made it all official. In some ways, it just summed up a campaign.
Interim boss John Kennedy watched his team control the match. They had all the ball and a bucketload of efforts on goal.
However, there was no conviction, no thrust. They found no way to win it. Like so many other days.
The only thing missing was the lost goal from a set-piece and it would have been their campaign in a nutshell.
United had to ride their luck but scrapped for another precious point. Micky Mellon’s team ran until they dropped.
At the end, it was Celtic players who dropped. To their
0
knees. In pain and in realisation. They haven’t been good enough this term and they know it.
The Scottish Cup won’t offer much consolation and some won’t be around next season to try to wrest back the power.
Right now, it’s not with them any more. It’ll take longer than yesterday’s bus journey back from Dundee to make the agony go away.
It was maybe always going to be that way on the day as, within seconds of this lunchtime match starting, a light aeroplane dragging a banner about Celtic now seeing Rangers whirred around the stadium.
Yet it was United’s defenders who had trouble locating their opponents during the first period.
Air traffic radar could see movement mainly in just one direction.
Which meant only a combination of weak finishing and superb Benjamin Siegrist goalkeeping kept it blank.
Mohamed Elyounoussi and Scott Brown had headers off target, Jonjoe Kenny a shot wide and Diego Laxalt flashed a brilliant volley at goal beaten away by the United No.1.
All that before the plane disappeared from sight – as Rangers had done months ago.
Ryan Christie and Odsonne Edouard worked a lovely move, which culminated in the French frontman being unable to get away a clean strike, before Siegrist had to get hold of a David Turnbull drive. Missed chances. The theme of the day.
Mellon was keen to have a go, with Nicky Clark restored to his line-up. American midfielder Ian Harkes did have a volley and a second strike saved by Scott
Bain, while Marc McNulty wriggled away to drag an effort wide. But traffic was flowing the other way as chances mounted up like flights listed on a departures board.
Edouard had another chance when he escaped the offside trap and took a neat touch before connecting with a left-foot drive.
Siegrist, making an impressive 100th appearance for United, turned it over the bar.
Ex-Motherwell youngster Turnbull and Edouard then engineered another opening that couldn’t be converted as Callum McGregor had a crack before Laxalt wasted the best opportunity of the first half.
Edouard’s flick allowed Elyounoussi to release the Uruguayan on the left of the box but he rifled into the side netting when he had time and space.
Siegrist needed to make another save from Turnbull following more brilliant buildup before the turnaround, yet it was a familiar story at that stage for the away side. Plenty of the ball, plenty of chances, no goal to show for it.
Fatally, that didn’t change in the second 45 minutes despite numerous more chances.
They had a glorious one almost immediately when Stephen Welsh had a free header from a corner fired straight at Siegrist.
It was a good save but the 21-year-old had to score, while Elyounoussi also failed to take capitalise seconds later when scuffing into the keeper’s gloves.
Never mind Ibrox. Siegrist was now turning this into his own anniversary party.
The way he got down smartly to palm away a Christie curler gave the look of a man who was just not going to be defeated. And so it would be.
After the plane above, it was tangerine and white coloured smoke flares on the park next.
Buckets snuffed that issue out just as Ryan Edwards did with a brilliant bit of one-on-one defending to deny Edouard in the box. Kennedy threw Tom
Rogic on for Turnbull in a bid to find that final edge but the blood was now being shed to go with the pain.
Bain plunged down to try to push a McNulty shot around a post. The ball took a kick up off the bobbly pitch and burst his nose as it diverted wide.
The blows kept coming. Mostly self-inflicted, such as when Elyounoussi somehow managed to nod past the post at the back stick from Christie’s sublime cross when completely free.
The Norwegian spurned yet another opening before Swiss keeper Siegrist grabbed a closerange header from sub Leigh Griffiths at the death.
James Forrest was also on as a change for Brown by that stage for a first appearance since sustaining a serious ankle injury on European duty in September.
How Celtic as an entire unit must wish they could turn the pages back five months and rewrite the whole season’s story all over again.