If there’s one thing that Ange Postecoglou has shown consistently in his time as Celtic manager, it’s that he isn’t one for making excuses.
Even when continual injury issues threatened to derail Celtic’s title bid last season, the Aussie was reticent to blame his thin squad for some cagey performances in the winter. He was also quick to front up about his selection calls when an over-rotated Celtic lost their first league match in almost a year at St Mirren.
So it’s fair to expect that even after a comedy of errors and delays caused by a combination of poor refereeing and VAR’s ropey introduction to Scottish football, the Celtic manager would once again have given a frank assessment of his team’s performance had they dropped points at Tynecastle yesterday.
This is of course, purely hypothetical, as Celtic battled to a 4-3 win in a fashion typical of their unflinching and relentless approach under Postecoglou. Once again, when faced with significant adversity, they provided the necessary answers and ground out three points, where other teams, even prior Celtic sides, would be content to submit excuses.
Even shorn of their injured captain, star winger, and first-choice centre half in Callum McGregor, Jota, and Carl Starfelt, and with usual first-choice picks Kyogo, and Josip Juranovic rotated, Celtic found a way to win, with four different scorers, despite conceding two penalties, being denied one of their own, and having a goal contentiously disallowed.
How appropriate that it was one of the more subtle Celtic stars in Greg Taylor whose inside run following the play into the box brought the winner, his inverted positioning a feature of Postecoglou’s Celtic style, and the glory of a winning goal at Tynecastle a fine reward for his excellent form so far this season.
The contrast could not be starker looking across the city to Ibrox, where Rangers were booed off by their home faithful for the second time in four days, and third time in under two weeks, following a turgid 1-1 draw with a resolute Livingston side.
Fittingly, Rangers were also the benefactors of VAR on the day, with the technology assisting in upgrading Morgan Boyes initally yellow card-worthy lunge on Alfredo Morelos to a red, Livingston playing out the final 12 regulation minutes plus seven more in stoppage time with ten men.
For all their tactical adaptability almost brought European glory last season, Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s lack of an obvious preferred philosophy leaves his side defaulting to aimless crosses when faced with well-organised low block sides, with even Championship Dundee threatening late on in a dour 1-0 cup defeat to the Ibrox side on Wednesday.
By all accounts, yesterday’s result has been coming, and a lack of consistent attacking verve and midfield craft across several performances have threatened to yield dropped points even before a ball was kicked in against Livingston in Govan.
Whilst Celtic go into a key period with many key players still fresh after consistent rotation in the last month, Rangers will likely have to go to the wire with the same core group that have underperformed for most of the season, with six fixtures left before the World Cup for both teams.
As their rivals falter and mutiny beckons, Postecoglou’s Celtic exhume harmony, with a philosophy and clear style drilled into every player, and that will go a long way to choosing the colour of the ribbons on the Scottish Premiership trophy in May.
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