Chris Sutton singled out Alistair Johnston and Arne Engels for special praise after Celtic came from behind to defeat theRangers 3-1 in Sunday’s Glasgow Derby clash.
The visitors had taken an early lead through Mikey Moore, but Celtic responded strongly as Yang Hyun-jun restored parity before Daizen Maeda struck twice to secure a vital win for Martin O’Neill’s side.
Post-match, former Celtic striker Sutton highlighted the impact of both Johnston and Engels, while also defending the Canadian full-back over an incident involving Moore in the first-half that has sparked debate.
On X, Sutton posted, “Engels excelled today. Celtic greater legs in the middle of the park when he plays. Alistair Johnston such a difference at right back. Celtic have toiled all season in that position with him out like a man down. Deserved a yellow not red as many of the straw clutchers claimed…”
‘The crowd played a big part,’ reckons O’Neill
The result leaves Celtic within touching distance of another league title with only two fixtures remaining. Hearts’ lead at the top was cut to one as the Jambos were held to a draw by Motherwell at Fir Park – which is where Celtic head to on Wednesday evening.
In other news, Martin O’Neill singled out the Celtic support for the part they played in yesterday’s win.
The Hoops boss said: “The performances, I think Celtic, I think the team can actually, when you play with a bit of freedom. But how often do you get freedom? You have to win football matches here. You have to dig it out.
“And people were talking about the four goals that we scored in extra time against St Mirren. It’s been part of the Celtic thing. But we’ve had to work for that. We’ve really had to work for it. This is the whole point. And today I thought there was some fabulous stuff being played. The crowd, of course, played a big part.
“I thought they were really terrific. They carried us along at a time when Rangers were in the ascendancy. But yeah, the criticism, I’m not worried.
“It would be nice to start a season, get your own thoughts together, your own plans, all that type of stuff. And lay out plans for the whole season. It wasn’t to be. And we’ve been playing catch-up. That’s the thing. And we’re still playing catch-up. So I don’t know. Maybe they might extend the season for us to catch-up!”
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1 Comment
The biggest frustration for myself, within our season of frustration, has been the amount of players we have, who would have been in contention for gaining a potential world cup squad place for themselves in a few weeks time now?
Best part of them, haven’t produced performance levels, to even suggest that they were worthy of such positions, when the inconsistencies were so high within there own performance levels for ourselves imo?
Even yesterday, we started with 6 players in such a position, and by the end of the game Engels might have increased that number to 7, especially as he is still a far better player than ratface for Belgium is ever going to be.
Even Julian done a fabulous job for filling in for AJ when required, which didn’t really affect our potential world cup squad number players either.
But, finally these player’s started to show up, and playing like they deserve to be going to a world cup.
The stage has been set, especially yesterday where big players have to preform in big games, and overall they did yesterday imo?
Some moreso than others obviously.
Even trusty, might have started a bit on the shaky side, but grew into the game and became solid enough, this despite doing a Starfelt role and having to play out of his more favourable position for the best part of this season.
Could even turn to Seb, to make an 8th player, and ralston and Saracchi might not be totally out of the picture for there countries just yet either?
So, with that amount of potential talents available within our squad, it was a delight to see our players finally showing up for ourselves, especially with it so long overdue this season imo?
One of the very few occasions, this season where we can make the claims of being the best footballing team in Scotland again.
We always had the highest quality of player in operation, despite the injuries occurred, but struggling to badly to get any form of consistency going within individual and team performances imo?
Would class yesterday, as one of our best performances of the season, certainly within our SPFL campaign imo?
And the differences it makes when our bigger players actually turn up, led by Calmac having such a great game also.
Still makes me wonder as to why we have made such a slog of this SPFL campaign?