WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 21st
League Cup

Celtic 2

Falkirk 1 after extra time

0:1 Gow 52
1:1 Zurawski 62
2:1 Hartson 94

Att: 24,953

MIB: Kenny Clark

Celtic: Boruc Telfer Balde McManus Camara Petrov Nakamura Sutton Maloney Zurawski Beattie

subs
Hartson for Beattie 61
Lawson for Sutton 99
McGeady for Maloney 105

Zzzzzzzzzzz...

If you thought that a cup tie where Celtic fight back from a goal down to win 2:1 sounds exciting then you should have tried sitting through this tedium-arama.

Maloney and Sutton started the game and fared pretty well. Sutton lasted 98 minutes before being taken off. Maloney didn't have his best game, but still managed to be, along with Nakamura, the driving force behind our best forward play. As for the defence - well, let's just say they were as secure as ever, which is round about way of saying that an hour into the game they allowed Gow of Falkirk to wander past all of them (and I'm not exaggerating) to score.

In August the Bairns held the lead for 10 minutes. It was cut to 8 here. Nakamura played in Maloney, who in turn played in Magic for the goal. Simple really. Why we didn't do it before was a mystery. As was the players' steadfast refusal to give us an encore within the 90 minutes, although Zurawski had a header well saved and McManus smacked the bar from a couple of inches out.

So all the hardy souls who didn't give away their direct debit tickets got to hang about for a further 30 minutes until finally one of the old heads decided that enough was enough. Hartson headed the winner from a Nakamura cross after drifting (or as close to drifting as BBJ gets) away from some poor marking and off we sail into the next round.