St Mirren 1-2 Celtic – Willie Collum has questions to answer
We enjoyed a terrific Saturday evening win, maintaining our one hundred percent Premiership record in Paisley, but Martin O’Neill’s team had to show great resilience to earn all three points against a dogged St Mirren side and match officials intent of reinventing the rules…
The 2-1 result moves us five points clear of St Mirren, who currently occupy second place, but the Paisley natives would have in no doubt been dreaming of heading to the top of the table during the half time interval with their side one nil ahead.
Despite a bright start, Celtic went behind in the 22nd minute after conceding a spot kick due to a calamity from Liam Scales.
The Irishman for whatever reason decided to remove his arms from his back when facing a strike, with the ball of course hitting his hand, leaving the referee with no other option but to award a penalty kick. The spot duly dispatched past Viljami Sinisalo by Nikolas Agrafiotis to give the home side a dream one goal lead against the run of play.
Celtic thought they were back on level terms not long after, only for VAR to rule out Camilo Durans goal for the what can only be described as the tightest of offside calls, using blurry lines where the ball wasn’t even in view. It also looked like this inconclusive image was the wrong one regardless as a second earlier shows Yang touching the ball and Camilo Duran actually onside.
Despite going in at the interval a goal behind, the overall feeling was one of optimism as the players were playing some decent stuff, and only that contentious and controversial offside call, and a terrific save from the home goalkeeper denied us from finding the net in an otherwise decent first half display.
The second half was pretty much the same, with Celtic dictating the tempo, and Martin O’Neill’s side got their reward in the 51st minute when Liam Scales atoned for his earlier error by glancing a terrific header into the back of the net from a Benjamin Nygren corner kick. It was no more that Celtic deserved and there was of course plenty of time remaining to secure the three points.
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Celtic went in search of the winner, and it duly arrived in the 68th minute courtesy of Celtic’s man of the moment Yang, who beat the home keeper after being beautifully played through by the once again impressive Camilo Duran.
From then on in, despite a couple of shaky moments, Celtic held on to register a valuable three points in a game the players fought hard and showed terrific resilience and character to earn the victory.
We even had yet another goal ruled out by VAR in stoppage time. This time it was on loan Chelsea youngster Shim Mheuka who was denied his first goal in a Celtic shirt, in what can only be described as yet another contentious decision going against Celtic in the night.
VAR checked the goal but could NOT show whether there was an offside or not. The assistant referee was therefore the best placed official and he did NOT raise his flag. But somehow the referee was asked to go to the screen to look at the inconclusive image himself and using pure guesswork ruled out another Celtic goal.
Let’s wait and see what Willie Collum makes of it in his next VAR Review, if the Scottish FA are still doing it this season.
In the end it was a win for Celtic that was well deserved, such was our overall performance. Had the match officials influenced the result then the storm would have been intense but this should serve as a warning to Celtic that months of moaning about Celtic getting a few decisions – like the late penalty at Motherwell back in May (that was a correct decision for handball) – there will now be a period where we can expect decisions to go against us.
Last night was only the start and despite best efforts it failed and Celtic still won. That’s why we are Champions.
