Celtic showed yet again today that we are by bar the best team in Scotland as we convincingly beat bitter rivals ‘Ranger,s’ 2-1 to win the Viaplay League Cup Final.
It wasn’t the best first half from both teams and there was a real lack of quality in the final third especially, with the likes of Jota not picking the right options and Maeda running the ball out of play or blasting over crosses.
But as all good teams do, we continued to pile the pressure onto Rangers and a great ball across the face of goal from Greg Taylor was either missed wildly by Maeda or brilliantly dummied by him, depending on how kind you want to be to him, and the ball fell to Kyogo, who got himself into a fantastic positing to slot the ball home as he was incredibly left unmarked inside the six yard box to put us 1-0 up on the stroke of half time.
Surprisingly, despite being dominated for most of the first half, especially in midfield, Beale put the same eleven out for the 2nd half, much to the disgust of their fans online.
And it was not too long into the 2nd half before Celtic got the 2nd goal, which was very similar to the first one, with Hatate looking up and squaring it to Kyogo who was yet again in space inside the box for him to slot home to make it 2-0.
It looked like we could go on to scored three or four comfortably, but ‘Rangers’ got back in the game and were on the front foot for a lot of the game after that, and I blame our slackness and switching off at the back thinking the game was won already because we kept getting caught in possession and giving the ball away.
Eventually, they got one back through Morelos, as the ball was crossed into him he managed to swipe at at and it someone ended up in the back of the net.
Johnston for some reason wasn’t even looking at the ball and was solely focused on Tillman, but if he was looking at the ball he probably could have headered it away, and I think Mooy thought that’s what was going to happen as he seemed to realise at the last second it was falling to Morelos and it was too late to stop it.
I’d like to add that apart from the goal, both Mooy and Johnston were outstanding today, in fact, so many men in green and white hoops were today.
Once our subs got into the game we were back on top, and we even had a couple of great chances late on to score through Haksabanovic, who should have at least buried his second shot but it wriggled past the post.
Not long after that the final whistle blew and Celtic fans and players were overjoyed and celebrated like crazy as we deserve to.
We showed all week how to conduct yourself like a top class professional football club and unlike that rancid lot, we do our talking on the pitch and we did that today, bagging yet another trophy, hopefully the first of three this season, but we’ll focus on celebrating this one first.
And Celtic keeper Joe Hart was clearly focused on doing just that today.
He also spoke to John Hartson after the game privately and was telling him how much he is loving it at Celtic and he didn’t realise just how much he would before he came here.
Check out the awesome video below.
