ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND - MARCH 04: Celtic's Benajmin Nygren celebrates after scoring to make it 2-1 during a William Hill Premiership match between Aberdeen and Celtic at Pittodrie Stadium, on March 04, 2026, in Aberdeen, Scotland. (Photo by Ross Parker/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Celtic beat Aberdeen 2-1 at Pittodrie to move into second place in the SPFL Premiership.
Goals from Kieran Tierney and Ben Nygren decided the points either side of a penalty from Kevin Nisbet.
For once there was no 87th minute plus drama but it was still a nervy night for Martin O’Neill’s side.
After coming back to take a point at Ibrox O’Neill made five changes to his starting XI.
One of those changes was enforced in the warm up when Dane Murray was injured.
CELTIC FORCED INTO LATE CHANGE
That forced Ben Arthur into an unexpected debut but the on loan Brentford defender cruised through the match.
In midfield Reo Hatate put in a highly influential 90 minutes, picking up on his substitute display at Ibrox.
Celtic got off to an ideal start when Tierney scored from close range following a corner from the left.
McCowan’s corner was knocked on by Liam Scales with Tierney finding space in front of goal to find the net.
In the19th minute Aberdeen were back on level terms after Scales gave a penalty away.
From that moment on the game was on a knife-edge.
Great 3 points for Celtic but a really tired performance. Tough watch in truth. Sinisalo with an outstanding save. Maeda with a shocking miss. Well played Benjamin Arthur thrown in at the last minute and played very well??
— Chris Sutton (@chris_sutton73) March 4, 2026
Early in the second half Vil Sinisalo pulled off an outstanding save from a Nisbet header, after that Martin O’Neill made a series of changes to impact the match.
Nygren came on in the 61st minute, six minutes later he popped up in front of goal to poke home a cross from James Forrest.
Referee Nick Walsh added five minutes on at the end of the 90 but there was no further scoring despite Aberdeen having two corners.
With nine matches left to play Celtic trail Hearts by five points. On March 14 they face Motherwell with the chance to reduce the gap ahead ahead of Hearts facing Kilmarnock later that day.
Next up for Celtic it is back to Ibrox in the Scottish Cup.
A win in Germany , Pittodrie and a draw at the Bigot Dome in 6 days ain’t too shabby
What a strange lot of enigmatic players we have in our first team squad.
I’d only we got 6 or 7/10 most of the time from the enigmas,we’d be fairly solid,but we get 3’s and 4’s and occasional 8’s and the odd 2 or 3.
Hope is all I’ve got left,because i really don’t see this ending well…barring a big collapse from Hearts and a mini one from the other lot.
Might as well just put my nervous system in the blender right now if this continues.
Bigmick, perhaps you’re not aware of the scandalous power of freemason referees in Scotland?
We started really well, KT got his goal and it all looked really good in 1st 10-12 minutes.
Step in MIB Walsh to break our rythm, interfere with play and award a soft (in a contact sport) penalty. Our momentum is, intentionally, fucked and at the 1st opportunity Mason Walsh awards a pen to the sheep? The surprise is there wasn’t one (surprise): it was hugely predictable.
BUT WE GOT 3 POINTS whilst our cowards in the board will, once again, say NOTHING about the cheating refs. It’s NOT incompetence, they’re cheats.
Thanks again, MON, you’re a magical kinda guy.
Fuck the new huns, the masons, the orange bastards and all its hangers-on.
Big Jock knew? Aye, he knew we had to score more than reasonable to win a match. He knew the game was run by freemasonic, orange bastards then as it is now. He knew how to defeat them. I pretty much despise religion and all its attendant horrors like what Netanyahu/Trump are doing now. The fact that Jock Stein was a protestant (and in those times) endeared me to him even more. But as religion is exposed daily for the man-made nonsense that it is, who will call out that filthy, (pretend) Yiddish, Zionist bastard for what he is and Trump too? For being war-mongering scum like Putin and many more. When will the ‘little guy’ realise his power and remove the global, belligerent bastards from office. Oh, sorry, forgot, we don’t HAVE to.
We’ll just pray for it!! FFS?
REMEMBER, the 1st casualty of war is TRUTH and transparency.
Where’s yours?
PS Bigmick, my last sentence is/was NOT aimed at you personally but those who’ll, no doubt, have a go at me for my remarks on religion. Those I refer to as the “flat earth, creationist brigade” and suchlike.
PPS ALL we need to lift the Title is for Celtic FC to win every game. ‘Others’ will drop points.
Nervy game but they all are now for sure…
Could be leggy on Sunday after tonight…
Just happy with the win though…
Any win any way is all that counts from now till May !
Don’t see how anybody can argue with the penalty, they have been given for that plenty if times, we’ve even benefitted in the past from that kind of contact, and if it was in their box and not given we wuda been complaining.
Sometimes the refs get it just cos their refs.
Walsh as we all know is no friend, but lets take the tinted specs off and just admit we are shite, and the next defeat is gonna put us all out of our misery, and that prob is gonna be Motherwell.
Winning this league would be a spectacular achievement but the bottom line is, appointing Nancy has cost us it.
As crap as we have been, if MON had been left where he was, we would’ve deffo won at least two or three of the Nancy games and that would see them all chasing us, and chasing is harder than leading the pack.
That’s the most frustrating part, the fact this predicament has been self inflicted by the suits.
Has the campaign been put to one side?
Cos it sure seems to have died down somewhat in the last week?