Celtic’s charge towards the SPFL title faltered slightly with a 1-1 draw away to Inverness Caley Thistle this afternoon.
Leigh Griffiths and Edward Ofere exchanged goals in the first five minutes but the expected goal rush never materialised.
A five minute delay in the first half as Dean Brill was stretchered off seemed to effect both side’s with Gary Mackay-Steven particularly effected by the clash with the goalkeeper.
After that the game failed to recover with little in the way of flowing football matched by another below par refereeing performance by Craig Thomson who seemed happy to flash yellow cards rather that control the match.
Ronny Deila had continued his recent policy of rotating his squad with Scott Brown, Efe Ambrose and Griffiths restored to the side with Kris Commons, Adam Matthews and John Guidetti dropping out.
Replacement keeper Ryan Esson had to deal with a couple of long range efforts from Brown and Griffiths and pushed away a header from Ambrose during the first half.
There was little of note from the second half with Deila sending on Matthews and Commons for Ambrose and Mackay-Steven but there was no scares around either goal. John Guidetti replaced Griffiths late on but was unable to make any impact as the match petered out.
The result takes Celtic eight points ahead of Aberdeen, after the same number of games with Derek McInnes’ side facing Kilmarnock tomorrow.
Celtic face the Ayrshire side on Wednesday night then meet Inverness again at Hampden next Sunday in the semi-final of the Scottish Cup.