brown is immense
Broony is walking all over these fucks.
Guidetti for Griffiths.
Griffiths had a great game.
shit 2nd half
What did this end
Thomson is an orange bastard.
Can someone make a .gif or a vine of Brown mocking the Huns, please? And one of the tackle on Black too.
Thanks.
Oul mcculloch at the back for sevco. Gave a good old âold firmâ performance.
Score?
Think we would have won by a lot more only for the pitch and Craig Thomson. Poor second half. Broony, Bitton and Griffiths were superb.
I donât like the balance between Commons, Johansen and Stokes behind the striker, think we can only use two of these three here as there is a shortage of pace and incisiveness with them playing together in this system.
Thoroughly enjoyable. Brown was superb all day. Bullied the fuck out of their supposed hard men. And Griffiths and Bitton were both superb. Strolled it completely. No surprise to see them folding so easily. Reminded me a lot of that Rangers crowd we used to play.
[QUOTE=âIl Bomber Destro, post: 1084339, member: 2533â]Think we would have won by a lot more only for the pitch and Craig Thomson. Poor second half. Broony, Bitton and Griffiths were superb.
I donât like the balance between Commons, Johansen and Stokes behind the striker, think we can only use two of these three here as there is a shortage of pace and incisiveness with them playing together in this system.[/QUOTE]
First bit is bang on. Think I agree with the second bit too. Forrest being perpetually injured doesnât help. Think we completely relaxed though when they gave up.
Scott Brown walked all over them. Bitton is a really good footballer. A couple of lovely goals. Happy enough with that.
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Thatâs outstanding. 
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Nice to see Jim McGuinness enjoying himself.
Good to see Jimmy getting involved.
Jimmyâs Winning Matches
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Ewan Murray in the Guardian
This was to prove an Old Firm oddity. That is, an end-result which both teams â secretly of course â would probably have accepted before a ball was kicked.
This fixture was never about who would book a place in the League Cup final in mid-March. The resumption of hostilities between Celtic and Rangers after almost three years made the game notable, not only in Glasgow but on a global scale.
Thankfully, such interest surrounds the overall Old Firm spectacle rather than the basic level of football on show. And basic is being kind. This was a dire match which could only really be deemed satisfactory by Celtic on the isolated basis of victory. Bragging rights are not particularly valid when dealing with feeble opponents.
Rangers, dysfunctional off the field and horribly lacking in viable strategy on it, lag miles behind Celtic, as was apparent during a first period which Ronny Deilaâs team completely dominated. After the interval, Celtic did little more than go through the motions themselves. If Deila was content with a 2-0 success, fair enough, but the Norwegian could have boosted his status in the eyes of the Celtic support by presiding over a team which went for Rangersâ throat. âIt canât be better,â said the Norwegian of his emotion. âWe did a very good job. There was an unbelievable atmosphere and the players were unbelievably focused. They performed very well. I am proud of the boys.â
This seemed clear overstatement from a manager who might not fully understand his working environment. After such a quick start Celtic failed to really press home their advantage in terms of talent, fitness and attitude. In Deilaâs defence, they did not really have to with Craig Gordon, the Celtic goalkeeper, not forced into a single save during the semi-final. For a supposedly competitive derby match, that is an quite incredible scenario.
The revitalised Leigh Griffiths claimed the opening goal, the striker meeting Stefan Johansenâs fine cross to head home at close range. The second belonged to Kris Commons, who latched on to a loose ball 22 yards out and shot high past Steve Simonsen.
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The Rangers goalkeeper, who got a hand to the effort, might be disappointed. Commons later delivered positive news to the Celtic support with the admission that the bizarre impasse between himself and the club over a new contract is now close to being resolved.
The overall sense at 31 minutes was that a rout would ensue. It did not, owing partly to a ludicrous refereeing decision â Griffiths was clean through on goal when play was hauled back for an earlier foul â a smart Simonsen save from Johansen and a glaring miss from Virgil van Dijk.
Celticâs approach was also open to debate. âWe did what we had to do. We did our job,â said their captain, Scott Brown. The second half proved a non-event, with Simonsen not tested at all.
âThat is for you to decide,â replied the Rangers caretaker manager Kenny McDowell when asked to quantify Celticâs footballing superiority over his club. âI thought we competed well. We set up to keep things tight early in the game so losing a goal early-on put a spanner in the works. It unsettled a few people.â
There was mitigation for the standard of football on offer. The dreadful state of the Hampden playing surface. Deila was quick to acknowledge as much and rightly so. For a national stadium, it continually disappoints.
âWe are a passing team and it was impossible to pass the ball on that pitch,â Deila said. âThat is not how a semi-final should be. It is not good enough, in my opinion. If you are going to develop Scottish football you need pitches you can play football on.â
Deila had withdrawn the lively Griffiths, replacing him with the on-loan Manchester City forward John Guidetti. That represented an act of mercy towards Rangers; following a prolific scoring run, Guidetti has gone off the boil. The clamour for Celtic to make the Swedeâs contract a permanent one has, understandably, died down.
The response of the Rangers support to what unfolded was loud defiance. They did not leave the ground, and nor was there audible criticism of their team. In many ways that is admirable but the occasional choice of verse was not.
The Billy Boys, Famine Song and No Pope of Rome were bellowed out by the blue-and-white masses in what proved a disappointing throwback to the times when Rangers attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. Those embattled and embittered fans do not care about that as, history tells us, the same is the case with Scotlandâs policing and football authorities. Offensive songs are treated by officialdom as a footnote, with varying degrees of unacceptable conduct from both halves of the Old Firm followings reacted to by the immediate pointing of fingers towards the other side.
By full-time, Celticâs supporters were treated to fist-pumping by Deila and a lap of honour. Even that seemed contrived â the culmination an occasion which merely endorsed the disparity between two teams while offering little insight as to how strong Celtic actually are. Thankfully for anybody who enjoys genuine sporting contests, Dundee United should provide a sterner test in the final.