Celtic Breakthrough Against St Johnstone as Rangers Struggle

At McDiarmid Park, Celtic finally cracked a stubborn St Johnstone with a move that had been coming.

Pressure had been building. Callum McGregor had already tried to take matters into his own hands, stepping onto a loose ball at the edge of the box and driving a shot goalwards. He didn’t quite catch it cleanly, and Toby Steward gathered comfortably. A warning, nothing more.

Then Celtic flooded the area and the dam burst.

Haissem Hassan darted into space and whipped a low ball right across the face of goal. Green and white shirts swarmed the six-yard box. Kasper Høgh threw himself at it, desperate for a touch, but it was Mika Baur who arrived with the composure and timing the moment demanded, tapping in his first Celtic goal.

Former St Johnstone manager Callum Davidson, watching on for BBC Sportsound, had sensed the danger just seconds earlier. Celtic were building a head of steam, St Johnstone were hanging on, and this time they couldn’t ride it out.

Pat Bonner summed up the difference: Celtic had bodies in the box. Baur only needed one good contact. He found it.

Rangers Crowd Grows Restless as St Mirren Threaten

Across the country, the mood at Ibrox felt very different.

Rangers and St Mirren were locked at 0-0, but it was the visitors who carved out the clearest opening of the night. The home fans had roared their team forward, trying to inject life into a flat performance, yet every misplaced pass in their own defensive third cranked the tension up another notch.

Then came the moment that should have silenced the stadium.

A clever third-man run from Fraser Taylor sliced right through the Rangers back line. One pass took out the entire defence, and, as Rory Loy put it on BBC Sportsound, not a single Rangers player reacted. Taylor was clean through, with time to choose his finish, time to think – maybe too much of it.

He strode in on goal, with Ivor Pandur holding his ground. Taylor picked his spot. Pandur didn’t flinch and made the save. A glorious chance gone, and as the ball was cleared, you could almost feel the collective exhale. St Mirren will struggle to find a better opportunity than that.

The visitors, though, grew in confidence. Loy noted how much more comfortable St Mirren looked after the break, while the discontent among the Rangers support began to bubble. With Kim and Curtis introduced, Rangers shifted back into a 4-2-3-1, searching for structure, searching for control, but not yet finding the cutting edge.

The game sat on a knife-edge. One goal either way could reshape the night – and, perhaps, the tone of the weeks to come.