Connect with us

Celtic

Shamal George insists Celtic Scottish Cup shock can happen despite lowly Livingston’s perilous Premiership position

Published

on

Shamal George is convinced beleaguered Livingston can pull off a Scottish Cup shock against Celtic this weekend.

The Lions are embroiled in a grim battle for Premiership survival and are six points adrift at the foot of the table. David Martindale’s struggling side have enjoyed just one win in their last 21 league games. They appeared set for a second at the weekend after going 1-0 up against St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park thanks to Andrew Shinnie’s astute volley, only for the Perth side to snatch an 87th-minute leveller via Nicky Clark’s headed effort.

It robbed the Almondvale men of a morale-boosting victory ahead of Sunday’s daunting trip to face Celtic in the cup quarter-finals. But, with their knockout successes against Raith Rovers and Partick Thistle rare bright spots in the last five months of a turbulent season, George still remains optimistic of an upset if they can sort out their defensive woes.

The goalkeeper said: “It’s going to be a tough game against Celtic, we know that. But it’s a cup game, so anything can happen.

“We got a point on Saturday. We just have to regroup again and keep our heads and move onto this weekend.

“It was frustrating. St Johnstone didn’t cause us any problems all day and then it was a soft goal. It’s the same thing, a free header in the box, and it’s not good enough. It’s annoying.”

Deliberately fanning the flames of a dangerous fire- Jackson accuses Rodgers

Keith Jackson believes that Celtic’s defeat from Hearts was almost all of their own doing.

The veteran Daily Record reporter sat in on a tactical tutorial from Rodgers last week but was decidedly unimpressed by the team selection and formation played at Tynecastle yesterday.

Losing Callum McGregor in midfield was a major blow but if it wasn’t for two incredible decisions prompted by John Beaton and implemented by Don Robertson the outcome of the match would have been very different.

Playing with 10 men for 75 minutes makes a huge impact on a team, having a penalty awarded against them for the most dubious of handballs in another handicap.

Throw those two issues together and most teams are going to end up losing, true there were plenty of areas that Celtic could improve on, that falls on Rodgers but there is an expectation that the Laws of the Game are applied in the same manner in every match.

Jackson takes a different view, in the Daily Record he explains his take on yesterday’s events:

That they failed spectacularly to get the job done was almost all of their own doing, even if manager Brendan Rodgers jabbed one accusatory finger in the direction of ref Don Robertson and another even more forcibly towards John Beaton in the VAR bunker.

By naming Beaton on more than one occasion in his post match media duties, Rodgers was deliberately fanning the flames of a dangerous fire. Yes, between them, Beaton and Robertson may have reached a number of fairly unfathomable decisions. And, true, the calls they collaborated on had a material impact on the match.

But, by pinning the blame for this latest slip up solely on the officials, Celtic are distracting themselves from an inconvenient truth.

Rodgers has his inconvenient truths to deal with all week at Lennoxtown and solutions to find in the remaining weeks of the season.

Going on past form the SFA will remain on mute even though Hibs and St Mirren have both had apologies from them in recent weeks.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending