{"id":275996,"date":"2026-02-01T22:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275996\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T22:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T22:21:15","slug":"cvancara-off-the-mark-as-celtic-win-to-leapfrog-rangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/275996\/","title":{"rendered":"Cvancara off the mark as Celtic win to leapfrog Rangers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomas Cvancara headed his first goal for Celtic as the champions moved back above Rangers in the William Hill Premiership with a 2-0 win over Falkirk.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Nygren was also on target as Celtic moved above the Light Blues on goals scored and six points behind leaders Hearts.<\/p>\n

Falkirk contributed to an entertaining game, registering 14 shots at goal, but Celtic were more clinical.<\/p>\n

Loan signing Cvancara marked his home debut with a glancing header from Kieran Tierney’s cross in the 39th minute to open the scoring.<\/p>\n

Nygren curled the ball into the top corner in the 62nd minute after exchanging passes with Callum McGregor down the left flank.<\/p>\n

All in all it was good day for Celtic, helped by Rangers drawing with Hibernian, but the fans’ unhappiness with the board was never far from the surface.<\/p>\n

A huge banner was raised before the match in a sparse standing section depicting directors Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay plus the club’s head of security Mark Hargreaves as contestants from the BBC reality show The Traitors. A sign below read: “Banish the traitors, end the bans.”<\/p>\n

The Green Brigade remain under a collective ban over an incident involving stewards and police at a previous match with Falkirk.<\/p>\n

The loudest chant of the day was “stand up if you hate the board” and the majority of the home fans appeared to join in, including some supporters in the directors’ box.<\/p>\n

Dissent will inevitably grow if Celtic do not add to this month’s loan signings of Cvancara and Julian Araujo on the final day of the transfer window.<\/p>\n

\"Hibs
\nOwen Elding in action against Rangers<\/p>\n

Earlier, Owen Elding made his Hibs debut off the bench to help them dig out a draw against Rangers at Easter Road.<\/p>\n

Elding, who completed his move from Sligo Rovers<\/a> during the week, came on for Martin Boyle in 66th minute.<\/p>\n

Heart’ 3-0 win over Dundee United at Tannadice on Saturday night had added pressure to the trip to Leith and Danny Rohl’s side failed to respond.<\/p>\n

Rangers goalkeeper Jack Butland helped to keep David Gray’s side at bay in the first half as the visitors laboured.<\/p>\n

The second half was much more of the same as far as Rangers were concerned, with Hibs keeper Raphael Sallinger far from busy albeit he was beaten by a shot from substitute Mikey Moore who was offside.<\/p>\n

There was no late siege by the Ibrox men, who can have few complaints about two points dropped to sit six points behind Hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tomas Cvancara headed his first goal for Celtic as the champions moved back above Rangers in the William…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-275996","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\/275996","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=275996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}