OUT FOR THE COUNT
Celtic raise the title flag then Hearts run up white flag
They asked the crowd to count down from 10 as skipper Scott Brown pulled the cord on a new season.
They can start counting back up the way to the same number any time they like. The more things change the more they stay the same. Celtic unfurl the flag then unravel the opposition.
A double from Leigh Griffiths and goal s f rom Scot t Sinclai r and Callum McGregor saw the six-in-a-row champions pick up exactly where they left off, grinding down determined opposition before burying them. And despite conceding an uncharacteristic consolation to Isma Goncalves at the death as Hearts dug in for stand-in boss Jon Daly, Celtic were at their relentless best after the break.
Griffiths – who took his tally for the club to 87 – said: “We wanted to pick up f rom where we left off – not just me but the team. Set a marker.
“Last season was great for us but it’s a new season now and we want to set even more records.
“We knew Hearts were going to come and try to make life difficult for us, sit back and let us have a lot of the ball. “In the second half, we knew they would tire – it was just about trying to take those chances and 4-1 is a decent scoreline.” The sight of the Scotland striker starting will have come as a relief to the home support after a calf injury saw him only manage a sub appearance against Rosenborg in midweek. Gri f f iths said: “I ’ m feeling good. Wednesday was about breaking me back in and this week we’ve got three games.
“So I got 60 minutes under my belt today and hopefully I can replicate that Tuesday/Friday.”
In some respects it was a free go for Hearts amid the upheaval – no one would have expected too much of them against the champs anyway, less so in the wake of the sacking of Ian Cathro.
And although the Jambos’ game plan looked pretty unsophisticated in an attacking sense – gain possession, adjust lasers, shell to Kyle Lafferty – defensively they were organised and clever. A virtual two right-back set-up
with Jamie Brandon and Michael Smith combatting Kieran Tierney and Sinclair was having the desired effect.
The experience of Aaron Hughes and Christophe Berra in the middle meant there always seemed to be a maroon shirt in the right place at the right time on the six- yard line when the balls came in.
Scotland stopper Berra in particular pul led off one bri l l iant piece of defending between the posts to deny McGregor after a poor Jack Hamilton parry from a Griffiths effort.
The midfield were doing their bit too. Lewis Moore was providing the energy on the left after a season doing the hard yards in Cowdenbeath’s relegation battle and the rest kept it compact enough to make the play through the middle a threading-the-eye-of-a-needle job. Which the Hoops managed a couple of times to be fair.
The best of them was a bruising burst from Brown in the middle, trampling over the top of Arnaud Djoum to set up Griff iths. On his left side you’d have had the mortgage on him to put it away but the shot flew wide.
It was a portent of things to come though – and the next time the striker got in behind, just before the half-hour mark, he made them suffer. With a lot of help. The ball over the top from stand-in centre-half Nir Bitton was sweet but left- back Rafal Grzelak made the mistake of half- matching Griff iths’ run in behind instead of stepping up.
Once they were in that hole keeper Hamilton then failed to bail them out. He was there f irst but his lack of conviction let the ball pinball off him, leaving the Celtic No.9 to find the inches he needed between the two Jambos to clip home.
Daly must have been climbing the walls of the dugout. First game in charge, everything going to plan, then you get a two-by-four to the head like that.
It’s what Celtic do though. It’s why they’re champions. They find a way. Grind you down.
Hearts were also lucky to end the first half with 11 on the park. Having already been booked for persistent fouling Lafferty dodged another when Kevin Clancy ignored what looked a blatant dive on the left of the box.
And despite a brief flurry at the start of the second half they were undone again by another nightmare piece of defending. The home side earned a corner from another average piece of Hamilton goalkeeping, his parry from McGregor’s shot having to be scrambled away from Sinclair’s predatory presence in the six-yard box.
But within seconds they’d handed him his goal on a silver salver anyway.
Who knows what Hughes was thinking. Facing his own goal, he got himself tied in knots trying to clear Griffiths’ corner, succeeding only in bumbling it off his standing leg to gift Sinclair a three-foot tap in.
If the second was a hand-out, there’s no question the third and fourth were earned.
Brown’s brilliant reverse ball inside Grzelak, McGregor’s cute dink over a lunging Berra, Griffiths’ diving header with him finishing in the net alongside the ball – it was class, start to finish. As was the next one. Sinclair left Brandon for dead with a spin in the middle before feeding McGregor for an 18-yarder that hit the roof of the net in a blur. Again if you’re being picky Hamilton should be doing better – it went in straight over his 6ft 3in frame into the middle of the goal with him standing bolt upright. A rare and unusual lapse eventually cost the Hoops their clean sheet. Brandon picked off Olivier Ntcham’s ball to feed sub Goncalves. He benefited from Jozo Simunovic going to ground when he didn’t have to and buried the shot in off a disappointed Craig Gordon. They’ ll both have more to worry about in the coming weeks than this result – but it felt nothing other than ominous.