Playing one of the Glasgow pair is never an overly enjoyable experience, but it was made even more frustrating by the fact that Celtic showed up in Dingwall and looked unimpressive.
Ross County lacked a touch of composure and finesse at the top end of the park.
The missing entity of injured Yan Dhanda was felt strongly. Attacks were frustrating to watch as Eamonn Brophy and Jordan White chased tirelessly down the channels.
When the ball did fall for the Staggies, there was often a vacant area lacking a forward player into which the ball should have been cut back.
Young Dylan Smith was thrown into the Staggies backline for his first start for the club.
🍀 JOTA FROM THE SPOT!
Celtic are 1-0 up after a VAR check for handball. Andy Walker says the penalty is 'ridiculous', do you agree? pic.twitter.com/ItNbeM8rDf
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) April 2, 2023
The 16-year-old more than held his own against Kyogo Furuhashi.
He was domineering in his duals and managed to nullify the Celtic front line until Alexandro Bernabei impressively fired home against the ten men of County.
Smith was coached through the tie by stand-in skipper Alex Iacovitti who also impressed at the back.
Hoops given a helping hand from VAR
Celtic weren’t overly threatening.
They played their game and went through the motions, but by no means did they blow away Malky’s side.
It was thanks to VAR that Celtic opened the scoring. A dubious decision.
After no appeals from Celtic players, VAR managed to dig deep in the video footage and dub something wrong with challenging your opposite number for a header.
Nevertheless, it handed Celtic a pedestal which they didn’t deserve in the game heading into halftime.
The fact Celtic can show up and be so drastically unimpressive for a team who are about to win the league is ever so frustrating from an opposition standpoint.
However, considering they have 20 times the wage budget of the Staggies, perhaps County can take a small slice of pride in knowing that realistically, players earning £30,000 a week shouldn’t have had to rely on VAR and a man advantage to overcome the Dingwall men.
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