Celtic’s Defence Answered The Critics Last Night With An Absolutely Brilliant Display.

Last night was, in a nutshell, the case for the defence.

I thought they were excellent. They did almost everything right.

I thought Starfelt, in particular, looked as solid as a rock, which is amazing considering that he is just back from being injured for five weeks.

That was an important game last night from the defensive point of view.

It is where the hacks constantly tell us that this side is lacking, that this team is frail.

I’ve been railing against that particular interpretation for many months.

Today it just looks absurd.

That was as solid a defensive display as you could have hoped for and it was more so because of the disruption to the side that took place before the game and during it.

We lost Carter Vickers before the match had even kicked off, and we lost Ralston once it had.

I know that throwing our boy Starfelt into the team when he was clearly going to be rusty from injury would have worried people. Giving Montgomery the left hand side berth when he hadn’t played in a while would have worried people.

Yet both acquitted themselves marvellously.

I was pleased for Adam who has waited patiently for this chance.

But I was absolutely delighted for the big Swede, who has eaten as much unfounded garbage as any player at any club has this season.

The guy was targeted by the press right from the start and they were not going to let up. They hoped that the Celtic fans would turn on him and that would have done the job. It didn’t happen that way at all.

Full credit to the Celtic supporters, in the main, for giving this guy the time and the space and the support to grow into his role. Now that he has I think we will see that he is a very fine football player.

Sure as Hell, he’s been playing at a higher level than the SPL for the last few years so when he finds his feet he should be absolutely dominant.

We saw some signs of that last night in what I reckon was his best display in the Hoops by far.

If he put a foot wrong someone will have to tell me where and when it happened because from where I was watching I reckoned it was a toss-up between him and Callum for the man of the match.