{"id":275805,"date":"2026-02-01T19:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275805\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T19:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T19:18:07","slug":"celtic-2-0-falkirk-tomas-cvancara-off-the-mark-as-celtic-leapfrog-rangers-football-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275805\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtic 2-0 Falkirk: Tomas Cvancara off the mark as Celtic leapfrog Rangers | Football News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tomas Cvancara headed his first goal for Celtic as the champions moved back above Rangers in the Premiership with a 2-0 win over Falkirk.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Nygren was also on target as Celtic leapfrogged their arch-rivals on goals scored and moved six points behind leaders Hearts.<\/p>\n<p>Falkirk contributed to an entertaining game, registering 14 shots at goal, but Celtic were more clinical.<\/p>\n<p>Loan signing Cvancara marked his home debut with a glancing header from Kieran Tierney&#8217;s cross in the 39th minute to open the scoring.<\/p>\n<p>Nygren curled the ball into the top corner in the 62nd minute after exchanging passes with Callum McGregor down the left flank.<\/p>\n<p>All in all it was good day for Celtic, helped by Rangers drawing with Hibernian, but the fans&#8217; unhappiness with the board was never far from the surface.<\/p>\n<p>Dissent will inevitably grow if Celtic do not add to this month&#8217;s loan signings of Cvancara and Julian Araujo on the final day of the transfer window.<\/p>\n<p>Falkirk had conceded four goals on each of their previous two trips to Celtic Park this season but were unfortunate not to get at least a point during a 1-0 home defeat to the champions in January.<\/p>\n<p>They set out their intentions to attack and created the first chance of note when Leon McCann crossed for Barney Stewart, whose header drew a diving save from Kasper Schmeichel.<\/p>\n<p>Celtic were making inroads when they got Yang Hyun-jun in behind on the right wing and the South Korean forced a decent stop from Scott Bain before Cvancara opened the scoring.<\/p>\n<p>Falkirk had a big opportunity to equalise before the interval when Liam Henderson headed a corner back into the goalmouth. Schmeichel saved Louie Marsh&#8217;s header on the line.<\/p>\n<p>The Bairns continued to threaten after the break. Calvin Miller shot just wide from 25 yards after being given room to run; Schmeichel saved Connor Allan&#8217;s header and Celtic soon survived a goalmouth scramble before Marsh shot into the side netting after a one-touch move.<\/p>\n<p>Celtic raised their game. Cvancara shot wide after being played into the left channel and Daizen Maeda was inches away from connecting with a low cross in front of goal.<\/p>\n<p>Nygren soon netted his 15th goal for Celtic and, although Miller fired not far over the bar, the goal effectively killed off the contest.<\/p>\n<p>Martin O&#8217;Neill gave a late run-out to Stephen Welsh, who has been the subject of attempts from Motherwell to get him back on loan for the second half of the season.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skysports.com\/scottish-premier-scores-fixtures\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">What&#8217;s coming up in the Scottish Premiership?<\/a>    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tomas Cvancara headed his first goal for Celtic as the champions moved back above Rangers in the Premiership&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-275805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}