Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic welcomed David Martindale’s Livingston to the east end of Glasgow  for a cold wintery clash on Wednesday 21st December and it was Postecoglous’s men who took all three points.

As the current champions retained their nine point gap at the top of the table , it was certainly a game of two half’s , which were both vastly different from one another. 

It was a dominant first half for the Bhoys as  , time and time again , the Hoops were hitting everything at Livi but mainly failed to take there chances , however, to the relief of the home support , the Bhoys did manage to find two goals to calm the nerves. 

23 minutes into the game , a cross into the box from Liel Abada  found the back of the visitors net after the ball deflected off of Ayo Obileye.  The next goal , to the annoyance of the supporters didn’t come till the 45th minute , with a strike from Kyogo Furuhashi. Livi only took two minutes to get back into the game after Nicky Devlin pulled one back for his team at  the bitter  end of the half , meaning it was 2-1 to the Hoops at the break. 

The second half had the visitors come out stronger with the confidence from their late first half goal as they pressed the hosts but had little chances at goal , the half was mainly dominated by the hosts , however, they failed to take their chances , once again to the annoyance of the fans , who braved the cold to watch the game.  The only piece of action came from a strike from Abada  which was called as offside by VAR , after the referee took a look at the monitor for his final decision, meaning the scoreline remained 2-1. 

Despite the encouragement from the crowd , the Celts  just couldn’t find the goal they needed to put the game to bed. 

It remained 2-1 and it was job done for the hosts despite a mainly lackluster performance. 

When speaking after the game, Postecoglou said : “It was a good victory but we know our performance can be better” 

“We started the game well and I just thought we lacked a bit of a cutting edge in the front third to take advantage of our dominance.”

Celtic’s Joe Hart also gave his thoughts on the game and their performance, Hart said : “Thought Livingston hung in well and made it tough for us but we got the result and we move on.” 

Overall, it wasn’t the best of performances from the current champions, but all that matters is they got the three points they crucially needed to hold on to the nine point lead at the top of the league table .