Hearts supporters not taking Premier Sports Cup exit to Celtic too well

By David Walton

August 15, 2021

Hearts supporters have been left furious after their side were bundled out of the Premier Sports Cup by Celtic this afternoon.

The Hoops ran out 3-2 winners against the Edinburgh side at Parkhead in the last-16. Goals from Odsonne Edouard, Stephen Welsh, and Kyogo Furuhashi secured a passage into the quarter-finals for Ange Postecoglou’s side.

The game came only a fortnight after Hearts managed to beat Celtic on opening day at Tynecastle in the Premiership. Revenge was certainly in the air this time around, and Hearts seemed to know it.

Celtic were embarrassingly better than the Gorgie side in the first 45. It was 2-0 going on five. Had it not been for some profligate finishing and some key blocks, Robbie Neilson’s men would’ve been on the end of a chastening experience.

Granted, they took advantage of some sloppy Celtic errors to haul themselves back into things. Carl Starfelt gave a way a poor penalty to Liam Boyce before failing to snuff out the danger from Aaron McEneff to haul it back to 3-2. But even so, they were well second-best in what was a laughable chasm that was shown to exist between the two sides.

Celtic showing that Hearts and co shouldn’t be a problem this season

The likes of Hearts, Hibernian, and Aberdeen all have the ability to bag results in one-off games. However, over the course of a full campaign, they can’t be expected to live with Celtic.

The Hoops showed today just how good they can be. In fact, the same goes for the three games before it in which we’ve been highly-exciting going forward.

Celtic have issues at the back, but even before they’ve been sorted out, you can still see the difference between ourselves and the rest of Scottish football. Today’s dominance only adds to the proof that the likes of Hearts won’t cause us much bother over a 38-game season. Or at least they shouldn’t.

There will be stiffer challenges than this. Negotiating venues such as Tynecastle, Easter Road, Pittodrie, the Tony Macaroni Arena etc will be hugely important. But Celtic are seriously exciting the supporters and starting to form something special that represents what Postecoglou wants to do with this team.

Contrastingly, Neilson would appear to be under instant pressure in Gorgie once again. Many Hearts fans have been left infuriated with what they saw today. Here, we take a look at just how angry they were:

In other news, Celtic showing promising improvements in distribution from the back