Julian Araujo saved the day for Celtic but he wasn’t beyond reproach for Martin O’Neill.
In the sixth minute of stoppage time at Kilmarnock the on-loan defender slotted the ball high into the net before racing off in a memorable celebration.
Araujo hurdled the advertising and a safety barrier to celebrate with fans as Celtic secured three critical points.
ARAUJO- THE MEXICAN CELT
In the space of six weeks the Mexican defender has established a real rapport with the club and fans.
Before January 3 Araujo’s season had consisted of one League Cup defeat for Bournemouth with his season in a rut.
Now he is central to Celtic’s trophy hopes. Over the last eight days he has been involved in three dramatic rescue acts as Celtic played with fire.
Araujo has embraced it all, speaking after the match he was as happy as any fan before being interrupted by a ‘stranger’.
It was as easy an interview as Araujo will ever undergo, until towards the very end.
The Mexican in Ayrshire found an Irish pensioner butting in with a biting comment.
O’Neill said:
Ask him about his first half performance?
Then moved swiftly off camera as the goal hero laughed at the put down.
The first half wasn’t great, far from it.
Celtic trailed 2-0, O’Neill made three substitutions at the interval, by the 64th minute the match was level at 2-2.
From then on it could have gone either way. Kilmarnock struck the bar from a free kick.
Two lengthy injury stoppages resulted in seven added minutes being played. Celtic took full advantage.
When Tomas Cvancara cut the ball back Araujo timed his run perfectly, steadied himself then shot high into the net. And off he went, celebrating with the fans, like a fan.
When the days action had settled Celtic ended up three points behind leaders Hearts with a game in hand.
Now the task for O’Neill is to sort out the first half performances to ensure that the late drama card isn’t getting over used.
Loved the way he laughed at the ref when shown the yellow card, pure class ???
That was supposed to be 3 laughing emojis and not 3 question marks ?
Did Martin say anything about the deliberate Kilmarnock handball in the box…
Because if not he should have !
Sutton says it came of his head but Martinright we cant have another first half like that but I would say plastic pitch cause and yang and Hiata going through the motions we have plstic pitches why they not having players on it on friday but our fitness is a 101 percent you seen kilmarnock midfielders fading and there subs bench aint as good as ours now do we go for europa win or league win our right wing was poor in defence abd forward simply one two caused trouble maybe cause yahng wasn’t tracking back I blame the artificail surface its the cheaper than cheap bodo surface artificail yet you wouldnt tell playing man city great game but the three in spl are very poor it brought Celtic down to relegation level till there super fitness plared uts part
I see you didn’t get that box of full stops (period markers) I sent you for XMAS.
Please slow down Jack. It’s almost impossible to make any sense of what you’re posting.
Another victory gained at the death, fully deserved because we play to the final whistle.
Araujo’s celebration was pure brilliant .
Hopefully we sign him in the summer window.
Sounds good, but I doubt we could afford him.
I suggest that those in doubt about the stoppage time go and watch a video of the full game and use a stop watch to time each stoppage. You will find that adding all these up means that stoppage time could have been even longer than 7 minutes.
Those with a modicum of intelligence know this and it should be borne in mind that the added time gives BOTH teams the SAME chance to do the business. McCann is notable for his moaning and generally reacts this way because of his consistent lack of fair minded reasoning. He does not appear to be someone that any intelligent person would take seriously. He has been badly damaged by his experiences elsewhere.
IT is not unusual for stoppage time to be 7 minutes or longer in England, where the referees and governing body are generally more professional and fair minded.