Hearts Made Celtic Battle Today, But They Never Made Us Sweat.

Today we got a harder game than many of us thought, but this was, after all, the team which before the game was third in the league. They’ve started well, and they’ve started strong.

Neilson’s team are always tough. He knows his business.

After the game he talked utter cobblers.

We’ll get to that, because I want to throw his whingeing into the great ocean of it which is emanating from so many of the Ibrox fan forums.

I don’t want to sound casually dismissive of their “concerns” but their tears and their rage is as sweet to me as the nicest dessert I’ve ever eaten. I am enjoying it.

We were made to battle today, and that’s the word, because they did what they always do and tried to rough-house us.

As I said, I’m not going into the foul count or any of that stuff but a lot of people will wilfully misinterpret the difference between going into someone hard and edging someone off the ball. One is a foul. The other is a booking.

So a real battle, that’s what we faced.

But it was one in which they never laid a glove on us in footballing terms.

Our keeper never had a save to make. Neilson can whinge as much as he likes about how they were “still in the game” until the first sending off but he’s kidding himself on because as Ange said at full time, we were never under serious threat.

It was never going to be “one of those days.”

From the moment we opened the scoring there was always only ever going to be one outcome in that game, and that was a Celtic win. I knew we’d get a second at well, and I think we’d have got it no matter who they had on the park.

The BBC thinks we toiled. I am getting sick of their one-sided nonsense.

We made life hard for ourselves in the second half, sure, but were never living dangerously, and for all that they had good spells but for the Hearts keeper it would still have been a cricket score. That was as comfortable an afternoon as defending champions could hope to have as they try to cement a points lead at the top of the league.

It was not all sexy, flowing football.

We enjoy that and we even expect it, but there are days when you have to grind. When you have to be a little physically strong and when sometimes you are frustrated because you don’t turn that dominance into goals.

If people are being honest they know only one team was really in that today and that was us. It was not thrilling to watch, but that’s the point. There were very moments that threatened to stop your heart.

This might look it and some might claim, but it wasn’t even close.