Hearts 1 Cetic 1

It was drab fare from Celtic for the most part against Hearts on Saturday when the Celtic midfield was posted missing for an hour against an, as expected, up and at em’ opponent.

With Willo Flood making only his second start in ten weeks and Scott Brown clearly nowhere near full fitness matters were only compounded by both Caldwell and especially McGeady playing well below their usual high standards. I did say especially McGeady when referring to high standards.

The managers choice of 4-4-2 tactics and retention of JVoH in attack were hard to argue with after Hesselink scored his third in as many games, albeit Hearts keeper Balogh did a fine impersonation of a seal with no hands (flippers, they’re called flippers – Ed!) by not saving a tame effort inside thirty seconds of the start.

What a start and was this us all set for an easy three points at Tynecastle for the second time this season? Think again as the home side with their line-up including the useful Aguiar, two milkmen, three civil servants and Stewart, on day release from Saughton prison, gave Celtic and in particular our midfield the runaround for the remaining forty-six minutes of the opening half.

In my opinion the runaround came primarily due to bad tactics with our midfield sitting so deep it allowed an average Hearts team to look far better than what they actually are. Going ahead so early gave Celtic the ideal platform to push higher up the pitch and to all intents and purposed wrap the game up by virtue of a second goal. Unfortunately bar our single passing movement of the first half which saw JVoH take a poor touch and then aim an even poorer shot towards the corner flag that was it I’m afraid from about an ineffective opening forty-five minutes as we’ve played in quite some time.

The jam farts equalising goal was a peach and in truth the only real touch of quality displayed the entire match. Stewart went down when pole-axed by a passing fly tapping his shoulder and from the resulting free kick Aguiar fired a quite tremendous 25 yard free kick with pace, dip and bend past the despairing dive of Boruc and into the back of the net.

Half time saw the injured McManus being replaced by Crosas with Caldwell dropping back to his favoured position at the heart of defence next to Loovens. Alas the arrival of Crosas had no impact on Celtic’s performance which wasn’t to see an upward curve until the arrival of Naka just before the hour mark. Celtic’s play started to improve, well in all honesty it couldn’t get any worse, and it was clear Naka was at the centre of just about all of Celtic’s creativity. Did Strachan make a mistake by not starting the mercurial Japanese midfielder? Probably. However, the fact Hearts players were now blowing out of their backsides following an hour of playing the game at 100mph undoubtedly led to more space for Celtic to exploit and with space and time on the ball to use then Naka certainly is the man.

Naka almost made an immediate mark when Naylor was adjudged to have been fouled on the edge of the box, a very soft award reserved for the same category as Stewart’s although in Naylor’s case he appeared to lose his footing rather than being pissed on by a butterfly, as happened in the Harts midfielders case.

Naka’s free kick was aimed towards the far corner of the goal only for Stewart to block the ball with his hands which high and to the left of his head. As clear a penalty as you could ever wish to see but amazingly not given by either referee Thomson or his mainstand assistant. Make no mistake if this had occurred in the Celtic penalty area and not been given all we would have heard about from Murray’s poodles in the Scottish media was all the decisions going Celtic’s way being a disgrace but following Mendes’ dive later that day at Ibrox and this blatant handball let’s hear no more nonsense about that or worse, from a handful of Celtic supporters who appear to believe everything they hear or read in the media about decisions being favourable towards Celtic.

Celtic were now camped in the Hearts defensive half of the field limiting their opponents to a rare breakaway which normally resulted in a long throw from Neilson into our penalty area.

A fine run by Naylor, you read that correctly, ended with the English Roberto Carlos playing the ball to Naka 12 yards from goal. Naka sidefooted it towards goal but a tremendous block by Zaliuskas deflected the ball behind for a corner.

There also followed a number of corners and free kicks into the Embra Huns penalty area with Loovens involved in just about all of them. First his header hit the head of his Hearts marker and deflected over the bar. From the resultant corner he lost his opponent and from eight yards out directly in front of goal he could only sky his effort high and wide. Soon afterwards another beautiful Naka dead ball only required a touch from Loovens to direct the ball into the net from all of three yards out but he was initially unsighted as the ball broke through a ruck of players and when he did reach the ball his effort was blocked for another corner kick.

Mizuno, who came on with eight minutes to go for the below par McGeady, had the final effort of the match when following a long throw from Naylor the ball broke to the youngster who fired a rocket of a left foot shot from 12 yards out just wide of the far post with Hearts keeper Balogh well beaten.

So the Celtic lead is now down to one point with only six matches remaining for us and the Huns and all of them against opponents in the top six thus ensuring no gimmes.

It should be interesting as two average teams battle it out to see who is the worst team to win the SPL in my opinion since 2005 although some may argue possibly ever.

Now that some sober reflection has taken place that one point may be crucial if history is anything to go by as in 2003 with seven league games remaining we were drawing 1-1 with Hearts at Tynecastle only for Austin McCann to score a late winner for the home team. That goal proved decisive as we ended up losing the league title by two goals and if we had hung on for a draw we would have won our third league championship in succession by one point.

The forced start of Maloney in the SPL following injury to Sutton and Hartson also galvanised Celtic. Could the imminent return of Maloney perhaps in attack due to injury to Samaras and Hesselink have the same impact?

Football is a funny old game at times.