SPL Saturday december 26th 2005

Celtic 2

Livingston 1

1:0 Maloney 39 pen
1:1 Dalglish 58
2:1 Nakamura 87

Att: 57,000

MIB: John Underhill

Celtic
Boruc Telfer Balde McManus Wallace Nakamura Petrov Lennon McGeady Maloney Hartson
subs
McGlinchey for McGeady 73
Virgo for Wallace 85

It might a good idea for one of the management team to approach Bobo prior to any game and make him repeat time after time, 'I will not attempt to dribble out of trouble'. Whatever assets the big chap has, nifty footwork isn't one of them.

Boxing Day games in a bygone age had a reputation for yielding loads of goals thanks, in no small way, to the players probably being blootered as they stumbled onto the pitch. This game had more of a hangover feel to it, although the ref must have been in the middle of a full-on acid trip not to award Celtic a penalty when Maloney was cleanly chopped down in the opening minutes. Even the Livi players looked surprised as Dougie McDonald frantically waved play on.

That could have given us the boost we needed because after that the players huffed and puffed to no great effect. Eventually, though, we did take the lead, from the spot after 40 minutes, but we were making hard going of it again against one of the bottom two.

The second half tempo was just being raised by the forwards when Bobo donned his fat red suit, white beard and began shouting 'Ho ho ho' as he presented Paul Dalglish with the equaliser.

That seemed to knock the team out of whatever stride it had. While Livi didn't threaten the Celtic goal, worryingly, we didn't really threaten them much either.

Finally Nakamura took matters into his own hands, taking a threaded passed from Telfer and striking a shot from the edge of the box into the near corner of the goal.

Three points on the table and Paul Lambert on his knees in despair in the technical area. Sorry Paul, but needs must and all that.

Strangely, for a game with so few incidents the Monday edition of Scotsport didn't show Maloney being fouled inside the penalty area in the opening minutes of the match. Another highlight they didn't show was from the six goal thriller at East End park where plucky Euro hopefuls Rangers picked up a valuable point. Could have been three though, if Steven Thompson hadn't missed any empty net 90 seconds before Dunfermline equalised.

Not that the Scotsport viewers saw that though. Odd.