Celtic are punished by Johnson

MOTHERWELL.. 1 CELTIC ............... 1

DANNY JOHNSON made Celtic pay for a hatful of missed opportunities last night with a late leveller at Fir Park. Ryan Christie had looked to have moved Brendan Rodgers’ side back to the top of the league with a well-taken first-half strike. But a missed penalty from Leigh Griffiths — and a number of wasteful free-kicks — meant Motherwell always had a lifeline no matter that Craig Gordon was rarely threatened all night. And Celtic were made to pay for their profligacy when Johnson

stepped up with just three minutes to go to rifle his shot home after a fine run. ‘It’s frustrating and disappointing,’ said Rodgers, who had made seven changes from the side which had lifted the Betfred Cup on Sunday. ‘It was definitely two points dropped. ‘We still should’ve won the game but we didn’t play well. ‘Even if we had won the game 1-0, I wouldn’t have been overly happy with how we played. ‘We were very broken in the first half — nothing to do with the changes, just individually, in how we were working. ‘We didn’t get our fluency and our positioning wasn’t good.’ But a delighted Motherwell boss Stephen Robinson (right) countered: ‘I think it’s a deserved point. When you play against Celtic you’ve got to be disciplined and the players did what we tried to do to the letter. ‘I think we deserved it and put pressure on them towards the end. ‘We were limited in terms of what we could do with our substitutions and people going off injured. ‘It’s credit to the boys — we deserved a point and now we have to try to get that consistency into all of our performances.’