THE LATE ESCAPE FOR ANGE
Giakoumakis grabs last-gasp winner as wasteful Celts scrape past Saints
THIS wasn’t vintage Celtic by a long chalk. It was so flat and wasteful at times that Sead Haksabanovic actually believes the players need to start staying behind after training to practise their shooting ahead of Tuesday’s all-important Champions League visit of RB Leipzig.
Yet, they got there in the end. Just like they got there in the 2-1 home win over Motherwell last weekend in another match that could have worked out much differently had visiting midfielder Stuart McKinstry not had a fresh-air swipe at the ball inside the area late on.
Celtic are a pale imitation of the team that tore through the likes of Rangers and Dundee United towards the end of August and start of September. The tempo and intensity is nowhere near as high. That feeling of controlled high-octane mayhem isn’t present.
It might be down to juggling the demands of Champions League football. It might be down to injuries to important players. It might just be one of those sticky spells most clubs go through over the long and winding road that forms a season.
With time ticking away at the end of this affair at McDiarmid Park, though, it looked like points were sure to be dropped for the second time in three league outings. Despite never hitting the heights, the visitors were a goal up with just over 20 minutes to play thanks to a first-half own goal from Andy Considine.
Then, the roof started to cave in. After Stevie May had hit a post for Saints and Joe Hart had been called into action, Alex Mitchell equalised three minutes into time added on. It was a goal that had been coming. Celtic had invited their hosts onto them and couldn’t really get out.
Yet, St Johnstone manager Callum Davidson had been wise not to celebrate. He knows what this Celtic side is capable of. And it was maybe fitting that Giorgos Giakoumakis should score the winner in the fifth minute of stoppage time.
He’d had a pretty grim afternoon. He’d put the ball in the net twice from offside positions. He didn’t lead the line particularly well. He’d been slack on the ball. Yet, he didn’t let his head drop.
And when home winger Drey Wright let the ball hit off him on the Main Stand touchline, falling over with a sore ankle and letting James McCarthy scamper up the flank, Giakoumakis moved into position in the centre.
McCarthy moved the ball on to Alexandro Bernabei, making his first league start at left-back, and his low ball was perfect. Giakoumakis met it yards out and all hell broke loose. He had his top off, ploughed into the punters behind the goal, letting all that relief and tension explode out of his skin as the realisation set in that his side had got away with it.
‘It would have been extremely frustrating if we hadn’t won because we had a lot of chances,’ reflected Haksabanovic. ‘That last goal made us feel joy and relief.
‘After training, though, we need to stay and do extra on shooting.
‘No matter who we play, we feel we are going to make chances, but we should have made this game 3-0 earlier and then just played it out.
‘You have to be really clinical at Champions League level. That is why I am saying we maybe have to stay behind in training. All of us. We need to focus on finishing and everything like that, so that when we do get chances, we are 100 per cent that we are going to score.’
Having made six changes from the side that lost 3-1 in Leipzig, Celtic did, in fairness, run the show for over an hour. It’s just that they didn’t look terribly zippy doing it.
Liel Abada was another player who just had one of those days, really, and it started as it was meant to go on just nine minutes in when he moved onto a fine cross from Jota and sent the ball over the crossbar when it seemed easier to score.
Matt O’Riley was then denied when keeper Remi Matthews touched a low drive from distance onto the post and wide, then Giakoumakis had the ball in the net but linesman Sean Carr’s flag was already raised.
In the end, though, it took a real stroke of luck to give Celtic the lead three minutes before the interval.
From a throw-in on the right, Reo Hatate played the ball out wide to Haksabanovic. He drilled a low cross into a dangerous spot that Considine turned into his own net at the near post.
Giakoumakis had the ball in the net again shortly after the restart with a crisp header from an O’Riley freekick, but it was linesman Alastair Mather’s turn to raise his flag.
Abada was then denied by the onrushing Matthews from a great position after being sent clean through, one-on-one, by an excellent slide-rule pass from Haksabanovic. And it became clear it just wasn’t going to work out for the Israeli, who was later replaced by James Forrest, when he saw Matthews get down low again at the near post to block a shot from a Hatate feed.
That’s when it all threatened to go off the rails for the visitors. Indeed, it did go off the rails until Giakoumakis’ late intervention.
Postecoglou rang the changes to rest players ahead of Leipzig’s visit and St Johnstone actually started creating chances. Proper chances.
With just over 20 minutes left, Ali Crawford played a ball forward that allowed fellow substitute May to get in behind Bernabei. Hart got just the slightest of touches on May’s effort to direct it onto the post.
Daizen Maeda, on at half-time for Jota, did have an effort chalked off for offside with three minutes left, but that was only a hint of the bedlam to come.
Moments later, Conor McLennan blazed over from a good position with Saints pushing hard and Hart then had to save from May in the last minute of the 90.
That’s when the madness really began, though. In the third minute of time addedon, Crawford fired the free-kick into the area which found Mitchell, who took a touch before forcing the ball home.
It was no more than Saints deserved. Yet, getting what you deserve isn’t part of football. Not when a team like Celtic is providing the opposition.
‘We have players who can make something out of nothing, so the game is never dead,’ said Haksabanovic. ‘It is a winning mentality here.’