Celtic great Chris Sutton has moved to big up the performances of Anthony Ralston and Joe Hart against AZ Alkmaar tonight.
The Hoops produced a tremendous performance to down the Eredivisie side tonight. A 2-0 lead will be taken back to the Netherlands thanks to goals from Kyogo Furuhashi and James Forrest respectively.
However, there were a host of individual displays that made tonight what it was. And special mention deserves to go to Hart and Ralston. The former made two big saves in the contest that kept Celtic in a stable position, whilst Ralston again stepped it up a new level in what was arguably a man-of-the-match performance.
And their displays were acknowledged by Sutton on Twitter as he reacted to the magnificent two-goal win for Ange Postecoglou’s team:
Chris Sutton spot on; Celtic boss getting top-level performances out of many
In terms of Hart, he’s proving a lot of people wrong at Parkhead already. He made two stunning stops against Jablonec last Thursday. Tonight, he produced the same, with the key moment coming early on when he diverted an early one-v-one onto the post.
Celtic are starting to see the leadership of Hart shine through. He’s been extremely vocal since his debut a couple of weeks ago. Having a player of his experience organising the backline is absolutely fantastic to see. It’s been too long since we’ve had a goalkeeper like that.
Meanwhile, Ralston is producing levels for this football club that we didn’t know he even had in him. That’s the difference between a good coach and a poor one. Postecoglou is managing to dig deep into his players and find performances that we couldn’t have dreamed of last season.
Ralston falls into that bracket. A player nobody could’ve imagined would still be in the team by now is now wowing us. Yes, he’s still there through necessity, but even when Josip Juranovic comes to the club, Ralston has every right to think he’s in with a shout of a large quantity of game-time this season.
Tonight was colossal for the football club. Hart and Ralston are two of only a host of heroes that produced big for Celtic.
The tie certainly isn’t dead. But when we travel to the Netherlands next week, Postecoglou will again be putting his faith in Hart and Ralston to come up big again.
In other news, Michael Stewart in awe of the job Ange Postecoglou is doing at Celtic
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