Scottish Premiership: Celtic all over 10-man Aberdeen - but still only 1-0 up

2 weeks ago7 min read2 comments

The narrative at Celtic Park was one of staggering dominance and equally staggering waste, a 1-0 victory over Aberdeen that felt more like a paradox than a procession. From the opening whistle, Celtic, under the intense pressure of a four-match losing streak for manager Nancy, swarmed over the Dons with the kind of relentless, geometric pressing that would make Pep Guardiola nod in approval.The breakthrough, when it came, was a moment of sharp simplicity amidst the chaos: a whipped cross found its target, and Nygren’s composed finish rolled home. Yet, that solitary goal became a monument to frustration as the woodwork was struck not once, not twice, but three times, each reverberating clang echoing the growing anxiety in the stands.The game’s pivotal moment arrived with the dismissal of Aberdeen’s Lobban, a straight red for hauling down the ever-dangerous Maeda, a decision that transformed a contest into a siege. For the next hour, it was a training-ground exercise of attack versus a deep, desperate block.Celtic’s midfield, orchestrated with metronomic precision, probed and passed, creating chances that were either spurned, saved heroically, or denied by the frame of the goal itself. The analytics from this match will paint a ludicrous picture: possession likely north of 75%, shots in the high twenties, an xG (expected goals) tally that would comfortably win most games 3-0 or 4-0.Yet, the only number that truly mattered come full-time was that slender, precarious ‘1’. This performance, for all its aesthetic control, highlighted a critical flaw reminiscent of some great sides that over-elaborate—the ghost of Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ sometimes guilty of seeking the perfect goal comes to mind.The consequence is immediate and twofold. While the three points temporarily steady the ship at Parkhead, returning Hearts’ lead at the summit to six points (having played a game more), the psychological toll of such profligacy cannot be underestimated.It gifts momentum and belief to a rival, in this case a Hearts side fresh from inflicting Rangers' first away league defeat of 2025, a result that tightens the title race into a potent three-way struggle. For manager Nancy, the victory is a relief but not an absolution; the underlying narrative shifts from losing to winning, but now to winning convincingly.The failure to kill the game against ten men will be a major talking point in the post-match analysis, a flaw that elite teams ruthlessly eradicate. In the grand tapestry of a title race, these are the dropped points in all but name—a failure to bolster goal difference, to inject swagger, to send an unequivocal message.Celtic were all over Aberdeen like a classic Barcelona side under Luis Enrique, controlling every blade of grass, but like those Barça teams on an off-day, they lacked the cold, decisive finishing of a Lionel Messi to translate supremacy into a scoreline that reflects it. The Premiership battle, now with Hearts showing formidable resilience and Rangers wounded, demands more than just control; it demands cold, clinical execution, a lesson Celtic learned the hard way in a victory that somehow felt incomplete.

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