With even more refereeing controversies restricting Celtic to three goals on Saturday and a convenient postponement the next day at Dundee there hasn’t been much focus on what actually took place on the pitch against St Johnstone.
The 3-1 scoreline looks like no big deal but digging a little deeper it was possibly a more complete performance than the recent 7-1 victory over Dundee.
Almost all season Celtic fans have been looking for a style of play, peak Angeball of January to April 2023 is unlikely but it wouldn’t take a complete return to those levels to outfox SPFL Premiership opponents.
After a frustrating first half battling against VAR and having a clear cut penalty refused it would have been understandable if Celtic had started the second half low key. But not a bit of it as the build up play to Nicolas Kuhn’s goal demonstrated.
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There was a purpose about the way Celtic pressed straight from the restart, St Johnstone weren’t given time to settle.
Joe Hart was involved in the final stage of the move, when the ball was fed left to Greg Taylor he saw the chance to inflict damage by bypassing the midfield and the obvious pass to Daizen Maeda.
Instead he fired a low pass towards the edge of the penalty box for Kyogo Furuhashi, instantly Kuhn knew what was brewing. When Kyogo turned his man to cross it was a fairly straightforward tap in but nevertheless a well worked and deserved goal. Back in August Celtic had laboured to a 0-0 draw at home to the same opponents.
After the international break Celtic travel to the Tony Macaroni and to Ibrox, maintaining Saturday’s standards in those fixtures to yield six points would make things very interesting for the April 13 visit of St Mirren.
