Celtic 2-1 Caley Thistle: Hangin On, Barely

By: JT | February 28th, 2008

Last nite against Inverness Caldeonian Thistle, Celtic tried to snatch a draw from the jaws of victory, but they failed in their mission.

After throughly dominating Caley for seventy minutes, an atrocious back pass from Scott Brown was intercepted around the top of the box by Marius Niculae. The Romanian slotted home past a stunned and stranded Artur Boruc, changing the face of the match and making the final twenty plus minutes incredibly tense.

Celtic managed to hang on despite being pinned in their half for the final fifteen minutes by a team that was ready to call it a nite only moments prior. 2-1 to the Celts, and three more points, but ugly ones they were.

In the first half it was all Celtic all the time. In fact it looked a lot like the Barcelona match, but with Celtic in command rather than their opponents. The Bhoys dominated possession, and easily took the ball from their counterparts whenever they damn well felt like it.

To Caley’s credit, they kept on playing hard despite Celtic’s superiority, and when they were in possession they looked a slick outfit. The match was still a tenuous nil-nil, despite buckets of chances for the Bhoys.

Georgios Samaras, Shunsuke Nakamura, and Aiden McGeady all spurned multiple chances to get the scoring going, and even Lee Naylor came close with a startling right footed blast.

But it was Old Reliable Scott McDonald who took the plaudits on the stroke of halftime. A Nakamura free kick, which has become Celtic’s #2 scoring threat after a McGeady run & cross, was latched onto by the little Aussie who poked in from close range.

Its truly impressive that someone as tiny as McDonald can score so many goals, whether headed or by foot, from corners and free kicks. He just finds a way to position himself properly and get the ball in the back of the net. I think the best term for Skippy is a “skillful poacher”.

The first 25 minutes of the second half offered a bit more of a back-and-forth than the first, with both sides coming close.

Celtic’s second goal was a real beauty. McGeady bamboozled three or four Jags, some more than once, in the left corner. He finally wriggled free and found the charging Samaras mid-stride and the Greek rocketed his header into the top left corner of the net.

Caley’s candle was close to burning out when Brown inexplicably offered them life. You’ll see it on the highlights at about the 7:00 mark. How he thought he was going to pass through Niculae and across the face of his goal is beyond comprehension. It really was the kind of mistake that should get a player dropped, but WGS says he’s “not going to stick bamboo shoots up his fingernails.” Well, thank goodness for that.

From that point on, Celtic seemed powerless to stop Caley’s growing momentum. The Jags never really got all that close to leveling, but there were moments when everyone at Celtic Park and at home held their breath. The final whistle mercifully blew as Caley were set to launch another attack, and relief was the word of the moment.

So in assessing this match, who is culpable for the near disaster?

WGS was in the stands, but the Brown mistake was training ground stuff. These types of gaffes have become commonplace, and they must be fixed. That falls on WGS’s shoulders, and if its a matter of concentration, then only players that can focus for the full ninety, no matter the opponent, should be on the pitch.

The second point is that only one of the substitutions was used. Brown wasn’t playing that well to begin with, and both Barry Robson and Paul Hartley watched the entire match from the sideline.

Finally, there doesn’t seem to be any step-on-the-throat type leadership on the pitch right now. The nasty aggressiveness of a Neil Lennon was missed on a nite like Wednesday when Celtic should have slammed the door, thrown away the key, and strolled down to the pub for a pint.

These are some of the best highlights I’ve found yet, if a bit lengthy.