One down, two to go
Celtic start crucial week with a victory over Motherwell –
BEING at Celtic Park yesterday was rather like arriving at a Rolling Stones gig early and catching the warm-up band, with the huge Champions League encounter against Borussia Monchengladbach looming tantalisingly on the horizon for the hosts on Wednesday night. The venue wasn’t quite full, the atmosphere was convivial enough but missing an edge, and long before the end you were pining for the main event.
Scott Sinclair got the ball rolling for Celtic with his seventh of the season after 19 minutes, and at that stage you feared for the Steelmen as the home support waited for the floodgates to burst open.
The fact that they didn’t probably owed as much to Celtic’s wastefulness as it did to a more than creditable showing from the Motherwell rear-guard.
It took a late penalty from Moussa Dembele to make the score reflect the balance of play, and in the end, strangely, both sides would probably be happy enough to leave with this result.
“I thought in the first half we played some great football, but didn’t counter press the game very well,” said Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers. “That was my feeling and message at half-time.
“Some of the quality of our football was outstanding and we created chances but we could have created more.”
Rodgers fielded a stronger outfit than might have been expected, but there were run-outs for fringe men Cristian Gamboa, Stuart Armstrong and Liam Henderson.
Most managers would probably err on the side of caution visiting Celtic on the back of losing 12 goals without reply on their last two visits, but since when was Mark McGhee conventional? He threw in two teenagers for their full debuts, with 18-year-old Jack McMillan at left-back, and Ross McLean, 19, in midfield.
There were a couple of early scares for the visitors as James Forrest fired into the side-netting, before Armstrong had a shot deflected just wide.
Motherwell settled down after that, but Celtic looked as if they could step up a gear when required, which they duly did after quarter of an hour as Dembele tested Craig Samson twice – with a curling shot and then a header.
A few minutes later, they took the lead. Forrest ran at young McMillan before cutting a low ball back into the area where Dembele took a fresh air swing at the ball, but Sinclair was following in behind to side-foot high into the net.
McMillan then got off the hook as he gifted Celtic possession, and moments later Dembele was bearing down on goal. Dembele’s effort after opening up his body rebounded to safety though off the post.
Proceedings fell a bit flat as we drifted towards half-time, before Kieran Tierney nearly lifted the roof with a Messiesque run and shot. Powering forward from the left, Tierney shrugged off Scott McDonald, danced past Richard Tait not once, but twice, side-stepped Ben Heneghan and crashed a leftfoot shot off the bar.
McDonald didn’t reappear for the second half with an injury, and only a super-human effort from Samson in the Motherwell goal prevented an early second for Celtic after the re-start, as he got down superbly to claw away a deflected Scott Brown shot, before picking himself up to block the rebound from Dembele.
Leigh Griffiths and Patrick Roberts were given a chance to impress on the hour, but nothing much else happened until a few minutes from the end when Brown poked a harmless-looking ball in behind that Stephen McManus left for Samson. The keeper hesitated, and the outcome of his foot-race to the ball with Dembele had all the inevitability of Usain Bolt taking on Hoopy the Huddle Hound. Dembele of course reached the ball first, Samson hauled him down, and a penalty was duly awarded which Dembele tucked away.
For Rodgers, the moment was significant in revealing the desire within his squad. “I said to the players before the game, for us to succeed it is not just about us being hungry it is about us being starving,” he said. “You have to fight. That was just a perfect example of the spirit in the team, in that they will chase everything.”
For Well boss McGhee, there was more than enough to keep his spirits high, particularly the performances of his young guns.
“I was thrilled with the youngsters and we’ve got others,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do with these boys, but it shows you the raw material that is coming through.”
So, a deserved win for Celtic, albeit from a slightly underwhelming performance. Now bring on the Stones.