From 31 games played against the Scottish Champions Saint Mirren have only ever managed 3 wins and two draws. Celtic should be overwhelming favourites but their broken legged stumble into this season doesn’t pour on the confidence.
One of the Saint Mirren wins cost Tony Mowbray his job after Celtic got a 4-0 hiding from Mirren in 2010. Pre-match Celts are Here spoke about Ronny needing to get some consistency and winning runs together Today was win number 2 after beating championship side Hearts midweek.
Kris Commons missed out on today’s game with a slight injury but is expected to make a return for Thursday against Dinamo Zagreb while Wakaso got to make his league debut.
Celtic looked to set the tempo from the whistle but it was Mirren who came closest in the first 5 minutes when Thomas Reilly rattled Craig Gordon’s cross bar from outside the box. The rest of the half Celtic maintained most of the possession without creating too many chances until the 41st minute when a Scott Brown run set up Guidetti in the box for him to fluff the ball over the Saint Mirren goal line with some help from John Goodwin.
Celtic have struggled to keep clean sheets this season and it only took St Mirren 4 minutes into the second half to find the net after pressure from two corners.
Ronny changed formation on the hour mark pushing Stokes up alongside Guidetti and the change paid off nearly immediately as Stokes slipped through Guidetti for his second goal. The Swede was to be denied his hat-trick as he came off shortly after when he was replaced by Scepovic.
With the score at 2-1 Celtic start to take control of the game again and Saint Mirren seem to fade energy wise. But most Celtic supporters will know a 1 goal advantage can lead to a nervy last 20 minutes.
Virgil Van Dyke nearly eased them fears on 75 minutes when his free kick clipped the wrong side of the top corner.
Celts are Here give our Man of the Match goes to John Guidetti………with Wakaso coming in a close second.
CELTIC (4-2-3-1) Gordon; Ambrose, van Dijk, O’Connell, Izaguirre; Brown, Johansen; Wakaso, McGregor, Stokes; Guidetti.
Subs: Zaluska, Fisher, Bitton, Kayal, Berget, Scepovic, Tonev.
