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1 month ago
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Daniels Balodis’ aboriginal extremity was decisive arsenic St Johnstone stunned Celtic with a 1-0 triumph successful Perth, successful a gathering betwixt the bottommost and apical clubs successful the Scottish Premiership.
Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic went into Sunday’s crippled knowing 2 further victories would seal their 4th consecutive rubric win, aft Rangers were beaten 2-0 by Hibernian connected Saturday.
But they were caught acold successful conscionable the 4th infinitesimal arsenic Balodis headed location from Graham Carey’s wide free-kick, scoring his archetypal extremity for St Johnstone.
Stephen Duke-McKenna was required to marque a goal-saving situation to contradict Nicolas Kuhn, earlier helium forced Viljami Sinisalo into a astute halt astatine the different end.
Reo Hatate rattled the station portion Jota lashed implicit the crossbar from a bully presumption arsenic Celtic penned their hosts backmost successful the 2nd half.
When they did negociate to deed the target, they recovered location goalkeeper Andy Fisher successful inspired form. He finished the crippled with 9 saves, with the prime of the clump coming erstwhile helium denied James Forrest with 8 minutes to spare.
While St Johnstone are 5 points adrift of Dundee astatine the ft of the table, the triumph offers them anticipation successful their bid to stave disconnected relegation up of the array splitting adjacent week.
Data debrief: Rare Perth decision for Bhoys
Celtic person agelong considered McDiarmid Park a blessed hunting ground. Before Saturday’s game, they had won their past 15 distant games against St Johnstone by an aggregate people of 48-9.
St Johnstone were winless successful their past 31 meetings with Celtic overall, drafting 4 and losing 27 since a 2-1 league triumph successful May 2016.
But they made the astir of their chances – and an inspired goalkeeping show from Fisher – to yet halt that streak, having lone created 0.58 expected goals (xG) to Celtic’s 2.2.
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