Celtic Get The “Statement Win” And Silence The Critics Both Inside And Outside The Club.

What an outstanding victory that was today, and one in the eye for those who still cannot wrap their brains around the simple, and obvious, fact that Brendan Rodgers is a superlative football manager who knows exactly what he is doing.

As proud as I am of the team today for that, and in particular guys like Scales, who have emerged as big, big players I am even more impressed by the boss himself who did not make a single bad call today.

No, not one. Including the team selection.

His decision to play Forrest was fully vindicated in that it provided us with experience and know-how on a pitch some of our other players will never have been on before. It was vindicated in his decision to take Forrest off when he needed to make the tactical change. Like a good soldier, my namesake came off without complaint.

That is James Forrest. More than 400 appearances. More than 100 goals. That is a club legend.

That is a footballer I am privileged to have watched. Some of the criticism that was fired at him, and the boss for selecting him, could only have come from the kind of people I talked about yesterday; brats who seem to like nothing more than castigating the players out there putting in a shift for us, people who don’t seem to derive any pleasure from following this team.

These are the sorts of people who still slag Daizen Maeda.

He was fantastic today, and I know he was getting stick in a lot of places before he smashed that superb shot high into the net late in the game. Even before that I had commented to friends that I thought he was brilliant. His work-rate is almost beyond belief.

He played wide left. He played wide right. He played through the middle. He set up chances. He tracked back. He epitomises “we never stop” more than any other player in the team. Yes he missed a couple of chances before his goal, but it was a performance brimming with quality.

The defence was excellent.

Sutton was dire in commentary today, finding every excuse he could to have a dig at Lagerbielke who he appears to have made his mind up about. He brought his A game today to his analysis. Unfortunately, Sutton’s analysis often sounds very much of the “I was sacked by Lincoln City” variety. Our whole back line deserves the highest praise.

Since the central defence was thrown together, they have kept clean sheets here and at Ibrox. They have held Feyenoord for 44 minutes in Rotterdam and would have strolled the rest of the game I think had Lagerbielke not been a little silly in his challenge. That’s inexperience at that level, as Rodgers has said. But these guys are really impressing me.

Callum McGregor, and not for the first time in recent weeks, produced a captain’s display and looks back to his finest. Matt O’Riley? If ever there was an example of a player totally transformed by a manager who “gets him” and who he seems to love working with, this is the guy. Rodgers is taking this guy from the status of a really good squad player to the level of un-droppable. He shows every sign of turning into a massive talent under this guy.

Kyogo had a quiet day by his standards, but he’s double marked nearly every week now and that creates chances and opportunities for others to exploit.

But today is the manager’s day. One of the biggest bits of praise I can give him is that when we go down to ten men under him, I never panic and never feel like we’re in any trouble.

He knows exactly how to react in those moments, and he did again today. His decision to take off Hatate and bring on the defensive midfield player, in Iwata, was inspired and would have been the last thing that the hapless Livingston manager would have expected.

As to the red card itself, I thought Beaton couldn’t wait to get it out of his pocket but Hart was a little reckless in throwing himself into that challenge. But I am going to forgive him for that.

It’s the first sending off of his career, in 700 games and he was simply carrying out the manager’s instructions in playing the “sweeper keeper” role which demands that he come out of the box and go for the ball when the opposition is past the last defender and he sees he can get to it.

He’s older now. His speed is not what it was.

But he played the same role at Ibrox and it was one of the contributing factors in why we won the game there. I hadn’t properly understood the “sweeper keeper” role until I watched him that day and recognised that he did it superbly.

The trouble with a keeper is that he is always scrutinised for his mistakes because he, unlike everyone else on the pitch, does not get a lot of opportunities to make up for it.

I said yesterday we needed a statement victory.

That was most certainly a statement. We played much of the game a man down and as James McFadden has just said in the commentary box, you would never have known that in how we played. That’s because the tactics were right, the changes were right and the mentality of this team was to keep calm and keep playing football.

I could not be happier with that. That was the performance we’ve all been waiting for, easily our best one of the season, at a tough ground and in the face of adversity … and even doubts amongst our own fans.

Put them aside, folks … the gaffer is back on deck, the Good Ship Celtic has its war guns out and suddenly we look formidable once more.