Heart and Hand pain for David Edgar as he concedes that the SPFL title is staying with Celtic
Soccer Football - Scottish Premiership - Rangers vs Celtic - Ibrox, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - January 2, 2023 Celtic's Kyogo Furuhashi celebrates scoring their second goal Action Images via Reuters/Russell Cheyne
David Edgar gave a surprisingly realistic review of the Glasgow derby as Celtic maintained their nine point lead at the top of the SPFL.
The years 2022 has taken its toll on the Ibrox vlogger as he watched a six point lead 12 months ago quickly overturned, the misery of Seville followed by another Celtic hammering and a place in the Champions League record books.
Micky Beale has managed to get a short term bounce out of what is effectively the squad that Steven Gerrard left behind with Malik Tillman the only Giovanni van Bronckhorst signing to start today’s match.
It looked like a last hurrah for much of the Ibrox squad, Celtic were well short of their best but still took a point as they exploited the long running problems in Beale’s defence.
The new boss might be a wizard with bibs and comes but when Alfredo Morelos tees up Daizen Maeda who brushes aside the ‘challenge’ from James Tavernier before scoring there is little that a world renowned coach can do.
While Celtic threw on matchwinners from the bench Edgar could only despair as he watched Ryan Jack, Scott Wright and James Sands fail miserably to keep Celtic at bay.
Rangers began to drop back, to drop back further. The manager made a couple of changes that didn’t work, Scott Wright came on and Sakala through the middle which was a shame as he was absolutely destroying Juranovic out on the wing.
Rangers sat back trying to see the game out, unfortunately didn’t. Celtic got a bit of luck when a clearance deflected into the path of Kyogo, he finished and it ended up 2-2. It feels like one that we let get away from us.
I don’t think that anything has changed after today. I think that we need new players in, I think that there are players that we need to move out, I don’t think that anything has changed in that regard.
This season the league was a long shot anyway, I think it is fair to say that it will be staying where it is.
The bench was the difference today, you looked at theirs and they had game changers on it. We didn’t and it was quite clear.
If Celtic beat Kilmarnock on Saturday’s Beale’s side will kick-off at Dundee United trailing the champions by 12 points..