Tounekti’s spot in Celtic’s front three was not the only attacking quandary for O’Neill going into the game.<\/p>\n
Camilo Duran had excelled through the middle while Kasper Hogh – another big-money summer signing – was out injured.<\/p>\n
But with Hogh fit again, the Dane started at McDiarmid Park and led the line again at Ibrox, with Duran moved out wide.<\/p>\n
Both struggled to make an impact and former Rangers man Andy Halliday was scathing in his assessment of Hogh’s performance.<\/p>\n
“Kasper Hogh has blown hot and cold for Celtic so far, but he was absolutely freezing today,” Halliday said on Premier Sports.<\/p>\n
“On the ball, off the ball – no desire, no willingness to get back and defend for his team.”<\/p>\n
After Hogh was brought off on 64 minutes, Duran was deployed through the middle, only to be substituted himself 13 minutes later for Shim Mheuka. <\/p>\n
O’Neill also opted to break up the centre-back pairing of Cameron Carter-Vickers and Auston Trusty that had started seven of Celtic’s nine games this season. Kieran Tierney returned at left-back and Liam Scales shifted inside to partner Carter-Vickers. <\/p>\n
On-loan Wolves goalkeeper Sam Johstone, who also started at St Johnstone, was perhaps a surprise inclusion given Viljami Sinisalo has kept four clean sheets in his eight appearances this season.<\/p>\n
Despite some sharp saves in Perth, the 33-year-old looked rusty at Ibrox, maybe unsurprising given it was just his second competitive appearance since March.<\/p>\n
Rangers striker Kevin Kelsy should have scored when Johnstone’s clearance went straight to him early on and Kim Min-Su had an effort cleared off the line by Scales after the four-time England international palmed a cross into his path.<\/p>\n
Johnstone spent the rest of the game being goaded by Rangers supporters every time he was on the ball. <\/p>\n
“If you’ve been beaten in a game you always think about selection,” manager O’Neill said post-match. <\/p>\n
“I’ll think about my own part in proceedings first of all and then we’ll see. I wanted people to experience this atmosphere and they certainly did that today.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tounekti’s spot in Celtic’s front three was not the only attacking quandary for O’Neill going into the game.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-890855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890855","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=890855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}