KYOGO TIMES IT PERFECTLY
Japanese star stops Rangers title charge in its tracks with his maiden Old Firm goal
HAD Kyogo Furuhashi’s match ended early he could hardly have claimed an injustice. For Celtic’s talisman another game against Rangers looked destined to end in frustration. He’d barely had a kick of the ball, let alone a sniff of something tangible.
As Giorgos Giakoumakis appeared on the touchline with 13 minutes to play, his race looked run. His side heading for defeat after a rousing Rangers fight-back, however, Ange Postecoglou needed an intervention. And he could think of no one more likely to stage it than his top scorer. Furuhashi stayed on.
‘Kyogo’s pretty clever,’ reasoned the former Australia boss. ‘He can drop in as a 10, he has played that in his career.
‘Rangers started to retreat a bit which meant that hopefully we would get more balls in the box. And if we did that, having extra bodies in there would help us. It worked out that way.’
The timing of Furuhashi’s first Old Firm goal — his ninth in 12 games — was impeccable. Thumping a rising shot into the net from 12 yards, the top scorer preserved his team’s nine-point lead at the summit of the SPFL Premiership. And left Rangers nursing mixed feelings over what might have been.
Close to a win they probably deserved after an aggressive second-half display, the Ibrox side are not the first to succumb to a late Celtic goal and they won’t be the last. Seventeen times this season the champions have claimed a huge goal in the final 15 minutes of games. Few will prove more decisive than the strike which stopped a Rangers title charge in its tracks.
Before this game Michael Beale railed against those who queried the mental strength of his side. The new Ibrox boss says he ‘wants to put the coat hanger back in the club’.
Falling behind to Daizen Maeda’s early opener after some wretched defending, his players pulled on their working clothes. Turning the game on its head with two goals in six second-half minutes, they had Celtic hanging by a thread. A hamstring injury to the visitors’ Greg Taylor after 20 minutes offered the shaft of light.
While Postecoglou was vindicated in his decision to hand Canadian international Alistair Johnston a baptism of fire at right-back, the introduction of Croatia’s World Cup right-back Josip Juranovic as a makeshift left-back worked less well.
After a sloppy, disjointed first half, Rangers emerged for the second a different team. They sensed Celtic’s unease with the imbalance in the back four. They took ruthless and swift advantage.
Criticised repeatedly for his lack of final product, Ryan Kent curled a sublime strike into the top corner to level after 47 minutes, reminding everyone of the big-game player he can be.
On the right flank, meanwhile, Fashion Sakala was a man on a mission. Given a licence to torment Juranovic with his pace, the Zambian international won Rangers a penalty kick after a rash sliding challenge from Carl Starfelt, captain James Tavernier stepping up to convert his 100th career goal.
Celtic and their fans are no lovers of VAR and that feeling hasn’t changed after Connor Goldson survived two handball reviews in five second-half minutes.
The first, in particular, saw the Ibrox defender raise his hands above his head in an unnatural position to block a Starfelt shot on goal. The kind of decision routinely reviewed and given before the World Cup, the handball rules are now as clear as mud. Even so, it’s hard to think of a clearer penalty than this one
In the second half Celtic failed to create a chance until they scored. It was, by their standards, a poor display. And slightly inexplicable after the blistering start they made to the game.
Rangers should have known what was coming. Twelve of Celtic’s last 13 league goals in this fixture had come in the first half of matches.
There was no surprise, then, when they started like a train.
God knows what Alfredo Morelos was thinking when he played the loose pass snapped up in the Rangers half by the tigerish Maeda. Gift or not, the Japan World Cup star still had work to do. Winning a 50/50 with John Lundstram, he burst past Tavernier and found himself one-on-one with Allan McGregor. His sixth goal of the season was his first against Rangers.
Celtic’s early flow was stemmed by the untimely loss of Taylor. Where Johnston produced a strong and confident performance it’s hardly surprising that Juranovic — a World Cup semi-finalist at right-back — struggled to provide balance on his weaker side.
Celtic’s first lapse so nearly cost them a goal after 27 minutes. Ponderous with the ball at his feet — he often is — Joe Hart allowed Morelos to charge down an attempted clearance in his own area, the Colombian chasing the ball wide and laying off for Kent to have the first huge Rangers chance of the match. Kent’s placed shot offered Hart the chance of redemption when he dived low to his left to touch the ball onto the post.
For the first time in the game, Rangers found some tempo and urgency. The one thing they couldn’t find in a nervous error-strewn first half was a pass or a finish.
Their game dropping off a cliff, Celtic reached half-time unscathed despite a couple of scary moments when Morelos missed the target with two headed chances from Tavernier corners.
In this game Celtic usually come out of the traps at the start of a half like a starving greyhound. Not this time. In the not-sodistant past, Kent was a thorn in Celtic sides. Not so much in recent times, the winger revved up the DeLorean and travelled back in time to drag Rangers back into the game with a brilliant strike.
As with so much of what the home team did after the restart it came from the thrusting, direct play of the rejuvenated Sakala.
When Kent received the ball out wide he steadied himself and curled a brilliant strike into the top corner. It was his first Rangers goal since October 1. Ibrox was alive now, the scent of Celtic blood in the nostrils. When Reo Hatate lost possession in the Rangers half, blue shirts poured forward.
Operation ‘give the ball to Sakala’ worked a treat when the wide man took on a ropey Starfelt. Cutting back on to his left foot in the area, he invited the Swede to make a rash sliding challenge. Invitation accepted, Tavernier lashed the penalty high into the net. Rangers, from nowhere, were in the driving seat.
Celtic were uncharacteristically ragged now. There was none of their usual fluency. Supporters will fulminate over two checks for handball against Goldson which failed to persuade John Beaton or the VAR officials. Had Malik Tillman managed to race away and convert a fine chance for 3-1, however, that would have been that.
What came next was a re-run of an old Celtic movie. All the big guns on for a re-enactment of the Alamo, there were two minutes of normal time to play when substitutes Jota and Aaron Mooy cut through a ball-watching Rangers rearguard. Mooy, then Giakoumakis, took advantage of more slack Rangers defending to nudge the ball into the path of Kyogo for his 16th goal of the season.