SPL Saturday January 28th

Celtic 3

Dundee United 3

1:0 Hartson 9
1:1 Fernandez 40
2:1 Zurawski 49
3:1 Petrov 67
3:2 Miller 82
3:3 Fernandez 86

Att: 59,875

MIB: Mike Ritchie

Celtic
Boruc Wilson Virgo Varga Wallace Nakamura Lennon Petrov Maloney, Zurawski Hartson
subs
Pearson for Nakamura 72

Wouldn't be Celtic if didn't have the odd journey through the emotional wringer, but this is becoming ridiculous.

3-1 up with the clock ticking down, except the ticking we could hear wasn't the minutes of the game expiring - it was a large time bomb called our defence, and they went off with quite a bang.

With a two goal lead going into the last ten minutes this game should have been buried (the key-jangling mob certainly thought so, they were heading for the door as soon as Petrov scored), but that's not the way of things these days.

First the linesman kept his flag down for United to pull one back (Shaun Maloney played him on cried the media, despite a rather obvious lack in the evidence department). That allowed the panic button to be well and truly hammered and in the confusion Fernandez strolled past Boruc to equalise. Fair play to Fernandez for not rubbing our noses in it when he scored. Plenty of players would have loved to get it right up a club where it didn't work out for them.

Yet it had all started so well when Hartson nodded one in before ten minutes had elapsed, but then some slack defending allowed the ex-Bhoy David to get his first. Zurawski kept up his impressive scoring rate and when Petrov celebrated his new contract with jammy deflected effort we all thought that it ws case of job done.

Still, the kind of lead Celtic have built up in the SPL allows us these kind of slips, and if it's been said once it's been said a couple of times; this is a transition season. The team is nowhere near complete. Especially the defence.