Wilfried Nancy continued to recover from his dismal start as Celtic manager, his side twice coming from behind in a ridiculous first half to beat Livingston and move to within three points of Scottish Premiership leaders Hearts.<\/p>\n
Four goals with scored in the opening 10 minutes, Livingston twice taking the lead only for Celtic to hit back almost immediately, with two further first-half goals ensuring a second win in six games under new manager Nancy.<\/p>\n
And with Hearts losing the Edinburgh derby earlier in the day – their final game of 2025 – Celtic could go top should they win at Motherwell on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Cristian Montano had Livingston ahead after just three minutes in West Lothian when he skipped past Hyun-jun Yang and fired past Viljami Sinisalo and in off the near post. <\/p>\n
Benjamin Nygren tapped in the leveller for Celtic three minutes later when Daizen Maeda headed Arne Engels’ corner to the back post. <\/p>\n
But Livi went up the other end and immediately restored their lead, Montano being left totally unmarked inside the Celtic box to fire a rocket beyond Sinisalo. Only eight frantic minutes had elapsed. <\/p>\n
Celtic, though, would level again a couple of minutes later, Yang eventually turning the ball over the line after a scramble inside the six-yard box. <\/p>\n
The contest them quietened a little for 20 minutes before Nancy’s side took the lead for the first time when Nygren fired the ball in off the inside of the far post. <\/p>\n
And Arne Engels added to the lead just before the break after the ball appeared to strike the arm of Livi’s Daniel Finlayson following a Celtic corner. <\/p>\n
After taking a second look at the incident on the pitchside monitor, referee Matthew MacDermid gave the spot kick, which Engels converted. <\/p>\n
There were no goals in the second half but plenty of chances for both sides in a compelling contest. <\/p>\n
Luke McCowan and Reo Hatate forced saves from Prior while Montano and Macaulay Tait enjoyed opportunities up the other end. <\/p>\n
The result leaves Livingston rock bottom of the Premiership table, four adrift of Kilmarnock above them, albeit with a game in hand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilfried Nancy continued to recover from his dismal start as Celtic manager, his side twice coming from behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-374763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}