MURRAY DAVIDSON’S St Johnstone side may have given Celtic a scare on Saturday but he can’t see anyone stopping the champions winning their sixth title in a row.
The Perth men found themselves back to 3-2 after trailing by three goals late in the match, which they deserved great credit for, and actually won the last time Celtic were at McDiarmid Park.
Davidson has played against plenty of Celtic teams down the years and this one impressed him more than most. It is why he thinks this Ladbrokes Scottish Premiership is theirs to lose – which he believes won’t happen.
“That is as good as Celtic have played against us for certain in the last couple of years,” said St Johnstone’s midfielder. “Offensively their movement and passing was very good.
“Can anyone catch them in this league? In my opinion, no, but you saw last year in the Scottish Cup semi-final when Rangers beat them on penalties, and 99 percent of people would have said deservedly so, and Rangers were the better team.
“But over a season I think Celtic will be too strong.
“Celtic’s movement against us was very good, they had more of the ball and we were disappointed with the way we kept turning it over. But even with all the possession they had they didn’t cut us open and the three goals from our point of view are preventable.
“That’s the way I saw it. Celtic were obviously very good but in the first half we had to get a little bit tighter, then because we were doing so much running when we did get the ball back it was extremely difficult to keep it. However, I felt Celtic in the final third were very good.”
For all his praise for Celtic, Davidson was critical of Leigh Griffiths, booked for diving, and Nir Bitton who was yellow carded for squaring up to the St Johnstone man after he had fouled Saidy Janko.
Davidson said: “You’re going to get bookings in every game of football, I thought the ball was there to be won and I’ve tried to kick it and I’ve kicked Janko.
“Bitton wanted to run and get involved and that’s up to him. He obviously thought it was a lot worse than it was, for me it’s a challenge you’re going to get in most games of football.
“I hold my hands up it’s a booking, I accepted that, why he’s run over he obviously felt it was a lot worse than what it was but from his point of view he’s picked up a silly booking.”
Griffiths did himself no favours when he went down in the box in the first-half and was rightly shown a card.
Davidson said: “In my opinion, from where I was, it looked like he was looking for it (a penalty). It all happened so quickly and when you’re playing we only get to see it in real time.
“There are times a player can go down and it’s not a dive but for me it looked like he was looking for it. Whether it’s a dive I don’t know, it might turn out to be a stonewall penalty as I’ve only seen it in real time. But I felt the referee got it right.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel