Celtic 0 - 0 Hibernian: Visitors get taste of revenge

THE significance of this stalemate to the title race will only be known in time, but the impact it had on Celtic, their manager and the vast throngs of their support was visible and audible the second the last whistle was sounded.

Boos for the Bhoys. Two more points dropped. The gap between themselves and Rangers now stands at 12 – a dirty dozen.

The numbers game makes for grim reading for the denizens of Parkhead but they deserved nothing more from this game, so dramatically different to the turkey shoot between the same teams at the Easter Road on Wednesday night. Hibs should be applauded. Colin Calderwood has performed abysmally in his role but clearly he galvanised his side expertly for this one. In Isiah Osbourne, they had a rock at the heart of the defiance and in Leigh Griffiths, Hibs had the game’s standout player, a bright spark in attack on a day when creativity was desperately low.

It was some turnaround in such a short few days.

Given what had happened between these two sides during the week, James Forrest, Anthony Stokes and Gary Hooper would undoubtedly have had sweet dreams in anticipation of the possibilities in the sequel, but they hardly had a sniff. Between them they scored four second-half goals on Wednesday night against a Hibs side that were, previously, to defensive stability what Bernard Manning was to political correctness. For quite some time now, Calderwood couldn’t have plotted a shut-out of any opponent had he employed four brickies at the back and let them get on with constructing a wall in front of Graham Stack.

That’s why their clean-sheet – hard-earned and well-deserved – was such a surprise. During Hibs’ spectacular slide into the ranks of the pitiful, they have seemingly become incapable of defending their own goal with even a moderate degree of success. They hadn’t had a clean sheet in eight games coming into this, a porous run that saw them ship goals in great clusters, 17 in all since the middle of last month.

The difference this time was that Hibs were organised and disciplined in defence and Celtic were woeful in attack, resorting to long-range shots to overcome their terrible build-up play. Their movement had all the energy of an Old Folks XI.

For Celtic, everything was flat, oh so flat. The atmosphere, until the emotion at the end, was as blah as it gets. For the longest time the only noise in the place emanated from those angry sons of Eireann, those stand-up patriots in the Green Brigade who had banged out two glorifications of the IRA within the first nine minutes and followed it up with further guff later on, some standard, and jaded, stick for the SFA and a highly mature take on the government’s secetarianism legislation that required Alex Salmond depositing it where the sun don’t shine. Now that Peter Lawwell is supposedly taking a hard line on these things he might want to have words. It’s not like he needs a compass to find them.

The match? Well, it meandered along, one error after another, one attack stopped at source by a level of passing that was dreadful. The pace, the movement was sleepy. Celtic had some chances, but not many and not great ones either. After half an hour, Stokes cut in from the left but shot straight at Stack. A few moments later, Stokes and Hooper combined and the Englishman glanced the outside of a post with his effort. Just before the break, Stack beat away an attempt from Forrest.

With Rangers having already won earlier in the day and the points gap between the Glasgow clubs widening to 13 as a consequence, it was time for one of those Lennon half-time rockets, the kind he seems to be specialising in these days. Whatever he said, it didn’t work. They were as poor in the second half as they had been in the first.

They began the second spell under a bit of a cosh. Hibs came out with attitude. Griffiths fizzed a free-kick just wide of Forster’s post and followed it up with some more clever play that brought momentary concern at the back for Celtic. Still we waited for the home team to stir. Still they never picked-up. When Forrest clipped Stack’s crossbar with a long-range shot it might have sparked something, but didn’t. Hibs looked utterly at ease.

Griffiths was loving it out there, switching from right wing to left wing and causing bother wherever he appeared and he brought out something in Danny Galbraith, too. Osbourne also. Galbraith got better and better as the game went on. When he forced a save from Forster midway through the half, Lennon had had enough. His midfield had been wretched, so two of them were hauled off, Paddy McCourt replacing Ki Sung Yeung, Victor Wanyama taking over from Beram Kayal.

Neither of them did anything to improve things. When Georgios Samaras was sent for it was more in desperation than anything else. There was no great siege late on, nothing for Hibs to worry unduly about. They coasted to their point and with it came a measure of relief for the beleaguered Calderwood. For Lennon, well, it was a calamity of a day. He spoke during the week of his team having turned some kind of corner. Premature optimism as it turned out. This was a wounding afternoon for the Celtic manager.

Celtic: Forster, M Wilson, Mulgrew, Rogne, Matthews, Ledley, Ki (71), Kayal (71), Stokes, Forrest, Hooper (83).

Subs used: McCourt (71), Wanyama (71) Samaras (83).

Hibernian: Stack, Hanlon, O’Hanlon, Stephens, Wotherspoon, Galbraith, Stevenson, Osbourne, O’Connor (78), Agogo (78), Griffiths (90).

Subs used: Thornhill (78), Sproule (78), Palsson (90).

Referee: Calum Murray

Attendance: 48,670