Last Sunday the Setanta pundit Scott Booth exclaimed that winning ugly on the road was "the mark of Champions. Only seven days later it remarkable became the mark of Chumps in the ace summariser’s mind. Nice one Scott.
That’s not intended to detract away from what was an abject performance however as Celtic huffed and puffed through yet another match, scoring a goal that was not only against the run of play but was also against the run of the half.
Credit to Falkirk however, although what their home support has against the Celtic supporters and the Nation of Ireland is beyond me as the visiting support were subjected to a level of abuse usually reserved for those whose tradition necessitates hate they still deserved something out of the match.
The goal when it came was not without controversy as Scott McDonald appeared to be in an offside position when the ball left Nakamura’s foot but skippy is not bothered by the validity of the goal. He said "I haven't seen it but if I was offside then that's just the way the breaks go.
"I had a perfectly good goal chalked off for offside in Inverness a few weeks ago and that cost us the game there.
"I like to think these things even themselves out over the course of the season. We know we didn't play well today but we won and that's all that matters."
McDonald also hit out at the snipers in the media who appear to use positive spin sparingly and discriminatory when he said "People have been having a go at us recently and we were a bit bamboozled by the criticism after we beat Kilmarnock last week.
"A lot of people said we didn't play well but I think we had 20-odd shots on goal. On another day we would have won by three, four or five goals and everyone would have been raving about how well we performed.
"But it's the mark of a good side when you manage to win games without playing well and that's what we've done today.
There was no doubt that Celtic aided there own cause with a robust defensive performance that kept its second clean sheet in a row away from home, although the curse of the right back did strike again! With Andreas Hinkel out Paul Hartley had stepped in to the right back position only to limp off himself with a thigh strain! WGS quipped "Yes, the curse of the right-backs has struck again. Paul got a knock on the thigh - I hope he'll be all right but at least it gave us the chance to blood another youngster in Paul Caddis."
The Managers opinion of this week’s game was a little more grounded than it has been in recent weeks. Strachan was relieved to walk away with 3 points despite the "below par" performance and he also revealed that he was calm despite the low winning margin. "I can't say I was overly concerned at 1-0 because I felt our centre-halves were excellent and our goalkeeper was always composed.
"It's never easy when you're only 1-0 up but the bottom line is we didn't deserve to be any more than 1-0 up because we didn't play very well. But most of the matches I've seen recently have been of a similar sort because of the state of the surfaces at this time of year.
"I was happy obviously for Scott to get his goal but I did feel that he was below par today, as were most of our players. But I'll get a DVD done up for them to watch it and see where they went wrong."
One area in which the players did seem to lack was having a bit of fight and being prepared to dig in. With Scott Brown the only player in the middle of the park volunteering for the fight this had the effect of nullifying our attacking penetration as our holding midfielder simply allowed Brown to fight without support. I like Donati as a player but he has to find a way to adapt his cultured skillfull game to the rough and tumble of Scottish Football, especially away from home. 2 or 3 exquisite Hollywood passes do not a Celtic midfielder make!
In other news this morning, Celtic have snatched highly rated youngster Ben Hutchinson on a pre-contract deal, albeit it would appear that he has been signed as ‘one for the future’ as opposed to a first team player. Stachan said, "He is something different from what we have got coming through from the younger lads," said Celtic manager Gordon Strachan. He has made his Middlesboro debut and we could speak to him because his contract is up.
John Park has done a lot of work on it and I have given John the go-ahead to get on with it."
If anyone can be trusted to spot a young player, it is John Park. Let us hope he has unearthed another gem that can be either an asset to the team or the bank balance.
Yours in Celtic
Clydebuilt