![\"PAISLEY,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/0024f612-614.jpg\"\/)
\nLiam Scales heads home the equaliser<\/p>\n
Celtic manager Martin O’Neill admits they will miss the talents of Yang Hyun-jun during some crucial games after the South Korea winger netted the winner against St Mirren.<\/p>\n
Yang scored in his second consecutive appearance as Celtic came from behind to beat Saints 2-1 in Paisley.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old will now fly out to Japan for the Asian Games and miss the midweek trip to St Johnstone and two games against Rangers, plus the Europa League opener against Ferencvaros.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill said: “We are going to miss him. He\u2019s in really fine form at the moment.<\/p>\n
“If they don\u2019t win the tournament, then he has to do (national) service. I hope they do win it.<\/p>\n
“But he\u2019s signed off with a brilliant goal. He\u2019s in great form and he\u2019ll work for you going backwards. He doesn\u2019t mind doing the hard graft.”<\/p>\n
Yang had an ice pack on his leg after going off but O\u2019Neill said: “He\u2019s OK. If he\u2019d got up a little bit earlier, I think maybe we might have continued with him. But he looked shaken up a bit, so we took him off.”<\/p>\n
Saints took the lead midway through the first half through a Nikolas Agrafiotis penalty following a Liam Scales handball.<\/p>\n
But the Irish defender headed the equaliser six minutes after the interval and Yang netted on a counter-attack midway through the second half.<\/p>\n
\nLiam Scales heads home the equaliser<\/p>\n
St Mirren were heading for the top of the William Hill Premiership at half-time and they registered 19 shots on target.<\/p>\n
“They played very, very well indeed,” O\u2019Neill said. “Caused us plenty of problems and took the lead. A 10 or 15-minute spell in the first half where I thought we were well and truly second best.<\/p>\n
“We came out with renewed energy, renewed determination in the second half, got the equalising goal and went on to win it. But it was a tough evening for us.”<\/p>\n
Celtic\u2019s winner came from Camilo Duran dispossessing Ryan Carr 10 yards into the Hoops half but St Mirren head coach Craig McLeish feels they are gaining so much more from their possession-based approach.<\/p>\n
“I thought there were so many good parts about our play,” McLeish said.<\/p>\n
“Probably the little bit of frustration was when we were a wee bit loose in possession. The first half, Celtic\u2019s chances come from us giving the ball away at times when we should be more secure on it.<\/p>\n
“And then even the second goal, that comes from us not being secure on the ball.<\/p>\n
“We can\u2019t then turn round and have a pop at the boys for that. We\u2019re asking them to play, we\u2019re asking them to be brave on the ball. We just need to keep doing it better at times, we need to keep building on it.<\/p>\n
“Throughout the night we carried a threat. Even when we go 2-1 down, we show so much bravery and personality to keep going and keep playing.<\/p>\n
“We probably have our strongest spell of the game and create some really good chances, probably unlucky not to take one of them.<\/p>\n
“It probably shows where we\u2019re at: we\u2019re so disappointed with not coming away with anything.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celtic manager Martin O’Neill admits they will miss the talents of Yang Hyun-jun during some crucial games after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-615863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615863","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=615863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}