MARTIN O’NEILL watched Celtic maintain their 100 per cent Premiership success rate with a hard-fought 1-0 triumph over St Johnstone in Perth last night.
A second-half strike from Mika Baur, his first for the club since his £6.8million arrival from SC Paderborn in the summer, got the job done to make it six wins out of six.
But O’Neill expressed his concern over the mystery of the missing strikers for large chunks of the game.
Kasper Hogh and Co were often posted missing when the ball dropped into the box as the Hoops toiled to convert their superiority into goals.
PERTH PUZZLER…Martin O’Neill wears a frown as he watches Celtic toil for a breakthrough against St Johnstone at McDiarmid Park.
It was the champions’ fourth odd-goal league victory of the season – following Dundee (1-0), Falkirk (2-1) and St Mirren (2-1) – and again it wasn’t comfortable on the nervous system with no leeway for a late error.
O’Neill said: “I thought we started off in good command of the game, or so it seemed, but without being able to get the elusive goal.
“I thought we caused them a few problems, then suddenly they’d broke on us and Sam Johnstone made a fantastic save, otherwise, we could have found ourselves a goal behind.
“And in the second-half, we needed to get the tempo a wee bit faster for us and actually get players into the penalty box, because I thought that Sebastian Tounekti in the first-half was causing a few problems.
“However, when the ball was whipped in, there was nobody at the near post, there didn’t seem to be anybody in the middle of the goal and didn’t seem to be anybody at the back post.
EXASPERATED…striker Kasper Hogh looks concerned.
“I felt as if that if we did get a bit of proper play wide and putting it in there, we should be able to get a goal.
“Eventually, that’s what happened. We got players in the penalty box when Haissem Hassan crossed.”
O’Neill, speaking to CelticPlayer, praised matchwinner Baur and said: “He’s a fine little footballer and I’m delighted he got the goal, which got us all three points.”
Turning his attention to Sunday’s Premier Sports League Cup quarter-final at Ibrox, the veteran team coach added: “It’s a big, big test for us, away from home, and with no fans.
“It’s a tough fixture for us, but we’ll go there and we have to play very strongly and we need to raise our game.”
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