A Brutal, Cynical, Shameful Away Side Can’t Do Enough To Stop Celtic.

In the last 18 months, about the time Ange has been in charge, this blog has returned to the same theme over and over again; clubs who come to Celtic Park with no intention whatsoever of playing something that could reasonably be called football.

That was one of those days today from Hibs, a display of breath-taking cynicism and thuggery which would have shamed a public park team. And in the week where standards and the need to improve them are one of the central topics of discussion they are winning praise for doing it and the media is singing a hard-luck story on their behalf.

They were not just awful today but disgraceful.

Short of the Livingston game from last season that is the most shameful performance from any team who has visited Celtic Park in the tenure of this manager. And like almost all of those which have come before it the central fact which should be remembered and lessons learned from is that it did no good whatsoever.

Hibs got exactly what their despicable anti-football deserved; nothing. Let the media express their sympathy and push the myth of a deserved point as they will, but if Scottish football has a bad reputation then it would be largely because of days like this, and when our games are being shown across the world clubs who play this objectionable stuff should be scorned by our hacks instead of being singled out for praise.

BBC thought the red card was “harsh”. Far from feeling Hibs should have finished the game with eleven on the pitch I was amazed that they ended it with as many as ten. There could have been several more yellows dished out to them. At least one of the yellow cards should probably have been a red. They kicked everything in a Celtic strip today, often without even the pretence of trying to play the ball. It as a brand of neddish football I have never associated with them and I cannot imagine their fans having taken any pleasure in watching it.

Our own performance was disjointed, largely as a result of their brutality, time wasting and niggling fouls to break up the game. The injury to Hatate knocked us out of our stride somewhat and that is a far more worrying development than anything Hibs looked likely to do to us today.

Big players come good at big times. You cannot ask for more than that your subs play a starring role in the win and they came up with the stuff for us big time. We’ve all been waiting to see what Oh was about and today we did. That goal is huge for him.

And it;s huge for us. We head into the international break now with our heads up and the injured players with plenty of time to get their fitness back. We are in a good place and as angry as I am about that appalling away team display I am delighted that we got the result.