Brilliant three points in Livingston. We are on the right path to more success.

[Joe O'Rourke]

A magnificent display and result at Livingston on Saturday, if anyone had said to me on the way through, would I take a 3-0 result, I’d have bitten their hand off. Livingston is one of the most difficult stadiums to go to and try to win, not because they are a great team, with a great manager, but because of their plastic pitch, and of the type of player and style of football we must play against. So obviously when we lost Joe Hart after thirty minutes, it became even more difficult, even though we were one up at the time.

I’ve said since Brendan came back as Manager that he was an Elite Manager, he’s also a reactionary Manager, who will change the style of play as the game evolves, as in the case of Saturday when we went down to ten men. I said to my mates, if we can avoid losing a goal until half time, Brendan will have a good opportunity to address the players on how he want’s to manage the game for the second forty five minutes, I must confess, I thought it would be a long forty five minutes, with us coming under an aerial bombardment, but the early goal in the second half settled us down, and gave us breathing space to manage to game.

The way we defended in the second half nullified their extra man to a certain extent, as we became a counter attacking team. Because of the extra man, Brendan didn’t squeeze up into their half, which would in effect be ten against nine outfield players in Livingston’s favour. Because Livingston mostly kept two players back in their own half, it then became nine versus eight outfield players in our favour when we challenged them in our half. Then of course we had the Daizen and Kyogo factor, the two of them ran the Livi defence ragged, ably abetted by Matt O’Riley.

It was a top-class display from Celtic, the response of the players to the red card was immense, every player gave an extra 10% and in Daizen Maeda we have a player with superhuman energy levels. Our back four stood strong all match as well, and Greg Taylor had his best game of the season. It’s pretty evident that David Martindale likes players who are of the big strong variety, it’s no coincidence that he likes to play a physical type of match, with the ball in the air quite a lot, and hoping to prosper from set piece situations, so the performance of Big Gus and Liam, along with AJ was very important, to keep a clean sheet in those circumstance was first class.

Speaking to other Celtic Supporters coming out of stadium, everyone was of the same opinion, it was a brilliant result, and a brilliant display for the most part, the only negatives I heard, were once again about the match officials. We all know what John Beaton is all about, and he was true to form as usual, not too many 50/50 decisions went our way, but we won despite Beaton and his assistants. The only negative stuff I have seen has been online, I don’t know who these people are, but some seriously need to get a grip, we have had a couple of setbacks, but we are top of the League, and every time we get a poor result it’s Peter Lawwell’s fault, so I take it, every time we get a good result it’s Peter Lawwell’s fault as well. We are stronger when we are all together, the last twenty years have been magnificent for the club, winning a World Record Quadruple Treble, and a World Record Eighth Treble. So let’s Keep the Faith, we are all Celtic Supporters, I was a Celtic Supporter yesterday, I’m a Celtic Supporter today, I’ll be a Celtic Supporter tomorrow, and it will be the same until the day I die, I’ll always be a Celtic Supporter
Glasgow’s still Green & White.