League Cup Thursday November 7th

Celtic 1

Partick Thistle 1

1:0 Lambert (42); 1:1 Burns (50)
after extra time.
Celtic won 5:4 on penalties

Att: 26,333

MIB: Willie Young

Celtic: Douglas; Boyd, Laursen, Crainey; Smith, Lennon, Lambert, Maloney, Petta (Sylla 70); Hartson, Fernandez (Petrov 81)

Will this game be remembered as the second coming of Rab Douglas? (probably not - sceptical ed)

In the last Glasgow derby he was most certainly cast as the villain. Now he's the people's champ again after a repeat of his Valencia heroics. That and the fact that this was our first penalty shoot-out victory in 13 years were only bright spots of an otherwise cold and miserable evening.

At Firhill, prior to the Basel fiasco, Celtic had struggled badly to get three points, and here Thistle closed us down again. Never mind the 'reserves' tag given to the Celtic team; these guys were meant to be proving that they should make the regular eleven. Some of them - notably Lennon - appeared to be playing their way out of the team.

Of course the game should have been well won within the regulation 90 minutes. We hit the bar, had a clear penalty denied (the ref bottled it and gave a free kick outside the box), and generally dominated, in the process doing everything but put the ball in the net. Thistle threatened with the occasional break, but these were dangerous only because Boyd's zimmer kept sticking in the mud.

Lambert opened the scoring after Hartson had headed it into the middle of the penalty box. Thistle equalised just after half-time following some calamitous defending.

Extra time was even more one-sided, with the one heart stopping exception when the Thistle striker missed an open goal.

And so to penalties, our favourite way to go out of a competition. Of Celtic's penalty misses only Smith and Lennon could be faulted; Smith for missing the target completely, and Lennon for as piss poor a penalty as you'll ever see. By contrast with the bags of nerves trying to beat Kenny Arthur, Rab Douglas was a nerves of steel hero, three times facing a player who could have eliminated us from the competition, twice saving (the other guy followed Jamie Smith's example and punted the ball into the heavens). He had one more save to make and it was the one which put us through. A double relief for the big man as it saved him from having to actually take the next kick - although he couldn't have done much worse than one or two of his team mates.

Bottom line: it's a cup competition and we're through, regardless of how we got there.