hearts v celtic

celtic's lead at the top grew to four points today as they won to make sure they started and finished the year at the top.

scottish goalkeeper, robert douglas was in goal for his first league apperance this season,while ex-coventry keeper, magnus hedman was out through illness while the jambos were missing aussie defender, patrick kisnorbo and dundee born, andrew webster.

hearts' defence was all over the place and early on at the start of the first half, young irish winger, aiden mcgeady leant on to alan thompson's smart pass to make it 1-0 to the bhoys.

but the edinburgh team weren't dead and buried and were pushing douglas to some well saved shots

ex-aberdeen defender, jamie mcallister hit a well struck free kick, which goalie, douglas was well positioned to save.

the jambos' dutch striker, mark de vries was then causing many problems in the celtic defence winning many high balls, but couldn't put the ball in the net, but so were the parkhead team and celtic were always very dangerous on the break and 'big bad' john hartson should have made it two after some good work by geordie, alan thompson, but he sent his effort went wide.

de vries was threatening again and was unlucky as his shot was blocked by celtic's neil lennon.

on 38 minutes, a controversial penalty claim was waved play on by mike mccurry, the hearts irish defender, alan maybury pulled down hartson which looked to be a stonewall penaly, but mccurry didn't think so. and it was 1-0 when the whistle blew for half-time.

on to the second half and celtic were severely threatening the jambo defence and hartson, mcgeady and petrov all came close to hitting the target.

number 10 striker, paul hartley failed to hit the target after a smart knock down by the biggest threat.

but celtic got the goal they had been pushing for on 68 minutes after a well worked goal was finished in style by bulgarian, stilian petrov.
hartson flicked on to english man, chris sutton, who played the ball into petrov who smacked the the ball into the top corner of the hearts goal and the hearts fans, for some reason weren't happy and we all felt sorry for them as they started to leave. (yeah right!)

hartson was very unlucky in injury time as his shot was cleared off the line as joe hamill stopped after craig gordon had failed.



HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN 0-2 CELTIC
McGeady, 9
Petrov, 68