Celtic head back to Tynecastle for the first time since Neil Lennon’s first game back in charge of the bhoys back in February.
It was a night of high emotion. The Celtic fans were on their knees after the shock departure of Brendan Rodgers not 48 hours before.
Rodgers was gone but the show had to go on and as we all stood with our heads in our hands trying to dissect what had happened, we headed to Tynecastle.
Neil Lennon had recently been dismissed by Hibernian and was immediately brought back into the fold at Celtic – John Kennedy making clear he wanted the Irishman in the dugout on short notice.
Celtic would score in the first half after a fantastic counter-attack ended up with the ball in the back of the net. However, it would start to unravel in the second half and when Ajer dithered in his own box, he conceded a penalty and Hearts were back on level terms.
The league wasn’t a foregone conclusion and Celtic fans were visibly still in shock from the Rodgers departure. As the game went on, it would appear the loss of our manager, the man who led us to so much success would result in dropped points – allowing our rivals to smell blood in the water.
However, in true spectacular Celtic fashion, there was one last twist in the tale. With no time left on the clock, Celtic pushed forward for the winner. With Hearts standing their ground, Scott Brown sent a speculative ball into the box and who was left rushing onto it but our star man Odsonne Edouard.
What a moment.
Less than 48 hours after Brendan Rodgers left us shell shocked. We were rattled, Lennon answered the call and was in the dugout, conceded a sloppy penalty and looked to have dropped points on a night where we needed a win…step forward Odsonne Edouard pic.twitter.com/uRhlAtx4cb
— CeltsAreHere (@HereCelts) December 18, 2019
As a fan, I celebrated that goal as hard as I have any big winner in any cup final. It was a goal the Celtic fans needed, a cathartic release of nervous emption after mental exhaustion. You want to talk about special and timely goals, this is up there. It was a rebirth of sorts.
It would be Neil Lennon and Odsonne Edouard who would go onto be the thorn in Hearts side again three months later at Hampden when the pair conspired to turn over a 1-0 deficit in the Scottish Cup final – walking away with a historic treble treble.
