Perfect hat-trick? You could never dream of better Old Firm debut
Header, right foot, left foot – the perfect hat-trick.
Celtic striker Moussa Dembele will have gone to sleep on Friday night dreaming of an Old Firm debut like this.
Most Hoops fans would have felt the loss of Leigh Griffiths to injury was a bodyblow but the 20 - yea r - old Frenchman banished all those thoughts.
What impressed me most, as a fellow striker, was he looks a natural goalscorer, with awareness and composure.
What a way to kick-start his Celtic career with Barcelona in the Champions League looming.
Mind you, Dembele’s first goal was down to some CRIMINAL defending from the Ibrox side.
Look at it again. Rangers had four looking to pick up and Celtic had five attacking the ball.
The other Gers defenders seemed to have designated zones but when they saw Dembele was free he had to be picked up.
He barely had to lose a marker or even accelerate towards the ball. He stepped into position and planted a fantastic header in off the post.
Mark Warburton wi l l be raging when he looks at that one in the analysis room. You just can’t leave Dembele with a free header – and it handed Celtic the momentum in the match.
Until then Rangers were doing well to keep possession in tight areas but, after they conceded, their use of the ball from defence was noticeably weaker.
It was Rob Kiernan’s ball out of defence that killed them at the second goal.
Once Dembele had possession there was only one thing in his mind – even though he had Scott Sinclair screaming for it.
His finish, with the outside of his right foot, was the act of a true striker. As a front player, I loved that.
Celtic’s third goal, when Dembele turned creator, just demonstrated the confusion between Gers’ centre-halves.
They were completely done by a basic crossover run and no-one went with Sinclair.
They chased the ball when Dembele dropped off and Sinclair had space to make it 3-1.
That was the game’s decisive goal and the centre-backs were culpable again.
I’m sure Philippe Senderos will regret his second booking. It looked ridiculous.
He misjudged the bounce of the ball completely, panicked and threw an arm up. What was already a bad afternoon for Gers then got a helluva lot worse.
The service from Mikael Lustig for the fourth was superb, floating a perfect ball over the backtracking Rangers defence.
Dembele’s movement to peel off the back post was excellent and the first touch matched it, across his body to smash home the left-foot finish.
He goes to the Nou Camp full of confidence and will be counting the hours to kick off.
Stuart Armstrong’s fifth was the icing on the cake.
It seemed a strange call when Armstrong came on for Tom Rogic as the Aussie had been a thorn in Gers’ side.
But the sub gave Celtic another dimension and his finish was clinical after great build-up play by young Kieran Tierney.
So Brendan Rodgers won Part One but it was great to see the professionalism and respect between the managers.
Warburton’s side haven’t gelled and he will have to work hard to rectify that before the next derby.
That was the most significant aspect of the Hoops’ emphatic 5-1 victory in the first Old Firm match of the season. Rangers manager Mark Warburton will question himself after this but he has a clear vision of how he wants his team to play. Now, after such a bitter d i s appo i ntment , t he spotlight will be on the Englishman. As a manager you never stop learning and you have to be flexible in your thinking. At his core he believes in his way of passing the ball – but there are lessons to be learned from this when Rangers don’t have the ball. The experienced players in the Rangers team, Joey Barton, Niko Kranjcar and Philippe Senderos, will look back on this in anger. They were the polar opposite of Celtic’s big players. They just didn’t turn up and that had the biggest outcome on the game. Now those Ibrox players must suffer and live with the aftermath because over the next week this heavy defeat will be picked apart. The players wi l l real ise the enormity of the game, every moment will be dissected.
This is the goldfish bowl of Glasgow and they are well and truly swimming in it now.
I have been through this and they are not going to want to experience a feeling like this again.
Look, regardless of all the tactics that we rightly like to pick through, so many of the goals are down to basic and fundamental mistakes.
The third goal by Scott Sinclair was decisive and Rangers defender Rob Kiernan came out of his slot when he should have kept the back four line. Moussa Dembele switched