Football
Daizen Maeda slotted past Allan McGrego
Kyogo Furuhashi’s late equaliser denied Rangers a famous Old Firm comeback victory and preserved Celtic’s nine-point lead in the Scottish Premiership.
Daizen Maeda collected a blind pass from Alfredo Morelos and fired the leaders ahead after five minutes.
But Ryan Kent brought Rangers level 100 seconds after the break and James Tavernier converted a penalty after Carl Starfelt fouled Fashion Sakala.
Kyogo’s 88th-minute goal denied Michael Beale a dream Old Firm debut as boss.
The start and the finish were all Celtic but in between they had a kitchen sink thrown at them. Just when you thought they were beaten and that the league title race wasn’t quite as done as we had thought, they grabbed an equaliser.
A dramatic moment. Perhaps a title-defining moment.
The visitors looked superior in the beginning, and it wasn’t as if Rangers were not warned about Celtic’s rapid starts in these games. Coming into this one, Ange Postecoglou’s team had scored 10 league goals against Rangers with nine of them coming in the opening half and three of the nine in the early minutes.
Make that four. Morelos’ day began with a reckless ball across his midfield to a space occupied by Maeda and Tavernier. Maeda won the ball, accelerated away from the full-back, ghosted past Connor Goldson and beat Allan McGregor with a lovely finish. It was a goal of ruthless quality.
A win and Celtic’s lead would have stretched to 12 points. Rangers’ hopes of making any kind of fight for the title were hanging by a thread at that moment.
In the 20 minutes that followed, Celtic were slick and Rangers were reeling. The home team looked anxious and vulnerable – Sakala really the only one with the right amount of edge – then Greg Taylor went off injured, Josip Juranovic appeared as an auxiliary left-back ahead of the benched Alexandro Bernabei and everything changed soon after.
Juranovic had a fine World Cup with Croatia and has a bronze medal to show for it. Here, playing out of position and getting a roasting from Sakala, all he had was a red face.
The first signs of a momentum shift came just before the half-hour mark when Joe Hart dallied in possession and got mugged by Morelos. Having charged down Hart’s clearance, the striker played it to Glen Kamara who moved it on to Kent.
He had space and time and tried to cushion his finish into the corner of Hart’s net rather getting out the bazooka and blasting it home, as he did it brilliantly later on. Hart recovered to make an excellent save, but Kent’s pained expression told its own story.
Celtic now lost their composure. Time and again Postecoglou gesticulated at the wastefulness of his players. Slowly but surely Rangers were growing into the game. They should have been level when Morelos had a free header from a Tavernier corner but he failed to find the target.
Three minutes later, it was exactly the same story. Same type of corner from the same side of the pitch, taken by the same man and headed wide by the same striker, Morelos getting up ahead of Juranovic.
That was three big chances and no goals. Not many teams in Scotland can get away with such profligacy against Celtic, but this was not the free-flowing, tempo-setting Celtic we’ve seen so often. And it wasn’t the vulnerable side of Rangers’ personality we were seeing either.
It took Rangers 100 seconds of the new half to get the goal they deserved, Sakala heavily involved when beating Juranovic before playing it to Kent, who buried an absolute peach beyond Hart’s reach.
Finishing has been Kent’s bugbear for a long while. He had scored only once in 26 games before this one – one in 38 if you include last season – but his strike this time was pure and utterly unstoppable.
Ibrox was electrified – then Rangers scored again. Sakala went past Juranovic then went down in the box under a challenge from Starfelt. Referee John Beaton pointed to the spot and Tavernier banged it past Hart. In the relative blink of an eye, Rangers were ahead.
It was a sensational comeback from a team displaying a new-found steel under Beale. His counterpart, meanwhile, brought on the attacking cavalry to try to turn it around. Giorgos Giakoumakis, Liel Abada and Jota all appeared for the rescue mission.
All those front players left Celtic open in defence, of course, and a late counter-attack could have wrapped it up before time. Kent motored away and fed Malik Tillman, whose effort on goal was blocked by Cameron Carter-Vickers. That was a very big intervention, as it turned out.
Celtic have made an art form out of scoring late goals this season, but until Kyogo did it you really doubted them. They’d posed little or not threat up to that point. Rangers had looked comfortable in their lead. There was a couple of minutes left and the visitors looked a beaten side.
Wrong. Celtic had another go. Jota’s cross pinged around the Rangers box, their defence suddenly muddled. When the ball broke free, Kyogo’s eyes widened as it came it him. The striker, without an Old Firm goal to his name, smashed it in to silence Ibrox bar the pocket of delirious visitors tucked away in the corner.
It was a goal that sickened Rangers to their core. What do you have to do to beat this Celtic team? The gap remains nine points with a goal difference that effectively makes it 10. Despite their best efforts, the mountain Rangers are looking up at is as high as it ever was.
Player of the match – Fashion Sakala
What did they say?
Rangers manager Michael Beale to Sky Sports: “The two goals for us [to lose] are poor goals to give away, certainly the one earlier on.
“We started well but we then conceded and took 10/15 minutes to find ourselves. We had two big chances with Alfredo and then Kent who hit the post.
“Their equaliser was poor from us, we sat deep and had three or four chances to clear it.”
Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou to Sky Sports: “It was a great game of football before we get to anything else, it was a cracking game. All eyes, not just in Scotland, but around the world were on it, and both teams at it – a proper derby.”
On mistakes his players made, he added: “They’re human beings, they’re not robots. It’s a big occasion, a big game, and we just tightened up in some areas where our football is a lot more free-flowing and we didn’t do that today.”
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