Celtic vs Kilmarnock Post Match Breakdown – Five Talking Points

Celtic came into yesterday’s game looking to extend their lead at the top of the table by four points. However, the match started at a fast pace, with the visitors having a massive chance within the first minute with Kilmarnock midfielder Tom Lowery having a close-range shot wonderfully saved by Celtic goalkeeper Sam Johnstone.

Just over ten minutes later Celtic thought they had taken the lead through striker Kasper Høgh but it was overturned by VAR after a foul by Mika Baur.

Then after the disallowed goal it was mostly the same with Celtic creating more chances and then in the 26th minute Celtic got their opener through defender Liam Scales stabbing it home from close range.

Following the goal it was a first half of relatively few chances with both teams having half chances as the first 45 drew to a close. Before the second half Celtic brought on returning South Korean winger Yang from injury replacing Jota who is still working his way back to full fitness from his long term injury. Celtic had started the second half the same way the previous 45 minutes had played out having majority of the possession and a few fair half chances.

Then, in the 73 minutes VAR awarded Celtic a penalty for a handball by Kilmarnock midfielder Aaron Tshilbola inside the box, with the responsibility lying with midfielder Benjamin Nygren however his poorly taken penalty was saved by Kilmarnock goalkeeper Nico Mantl, keeping the score at 1-0.

The biggest concern though came in the 84th minute with midfielder Mika Baur picking up an ankle injury with Celtic manager Martin O’Neill saying he isn’t too sure how severe the injury will be to the German.

After that the game tapered out with Celtic coming away with victory in yet another poor performance. The game ended with Celtic having 59% possession and 20 shots with five on target and an XG of 2.21 which highlights, more poor finishing from the Champions.

For me the biggest standout was Celtic striker Kasper Hogh who I thought had his best match for Celtic (claiming man of the match). I thought his hold up play was excellent and was extremely unfortunate to not get his goal today, hopefully it is a performance the Danish striker can build on and start to add the goals to his game as well.

The midfield is still looking unbalanced with Nygren having another poor performance. Struggling to contribute defensively and not covering spaces on the midfield. Also Nygren is becoming more of a luxury player now the goals and assists are starting to dry up for the Swede.

So I think that’s something the coaching staff have to look at over the break and how they can add that balance. With the spaces Nygren leaves open it’s something a lot of teams have exploited against Celtic this season. Alex Oxlade Chamberlain is one option Celtic could bring in and look to push McGregor further forward in midfield.

Kilmarnock had a solid game plan which has proven to have worked multiple times against Celtic this season but they will rue some of the missed chances they had. With Neil McCann’s side showing much more improvements from that 5-1 drubbing they had at Rugby Park back in August.

Over they will need to improve will be their finishing with only 13 league goals ftom 17.8 XG which shows how poor the finishing has been all season. They will need to start picking up points as soon as possible if they want to have any chance of survival this season.

Celtic head into the international break four points clear of second place the Rangers although they do still have a game in hand. While the league leaders will be happy with the result, the performances do need to start improving fast as the results will start to match the performances and that will lead to more dropped points.

They also head in to the international break bottom of the league two points behind eleventh place (Aberdeen) and tenth place (Hibernian) with manager Neil McCann still under increasing pressure to whether the Kilmarnock hierarchy will look to make a change over the upcoming international break.

Andrew McGuinness