Kilmarnock 0 - 0 Celtic

Kick off 6pm Sunday 21st March

Rugby Park this evening was the venue for two terrible advertisements of Scottish football. Firstly Celtic were woeful, they were wholy inadequate at breaking through Kilmarnock's off-side trap. Jo Venglos did not help his case for staying at Celtic Park by not committing a single substitute in an attempt to wrestle a victory from the tie. Surely Mark Burchill's speed would always have been more useful than Mark Viduka's power against a well organised off-side trap.

However the most worrying aspect for the long term good fortune of Scottish football was the attitude of Kilmarnock, their approach to what should have been a good old fashioned six pointer in their quest for European qualification. Kilmarnock at no point attempted to win the game, their fans cheered the final whistle as though the league championship had been won, and the smiles on some of the players faces surely reflected loyalty to teams they once played for not their current employers. Kilmarnock are supposedly the third best team in Scotland at the moment, playing at home they should have been looking to beat a team one place above them, however a traditional deference to superiority lead to their losing of two points and perfectly illustrated why they will always be a second rate operation.

The game itself was not great entertainment, Kilmarnock throttled that out of the tie from the first whistle. In fact, ironically the two best chances of the game fell to Kilmarnock, both to Ally McCoist. Thankfully McCoist showed that his days as a first grade footballer have passed and that he would be better sticking to "A Question of Sport".

Kilmarnock's defence were the strongest element of the game and rarely looked uncomfortable what has recently been a moest formidable attack. Chances for the Celts were very thin on the ground, in the first half Viduka and Blinker were unable to convert half chances, Blinkers should have been called off side anyhow. In the second half Burley became a driving force, a long range shot testing Marshall and a close range header he would normally have finished. The game rarely looked like providing a goal and the final whistle was a mercy killing to a game that had little quality whatsoever.

Celtic and Rangers do need to look forward to joining some sort of British league. They have simply outgrown the SPL, spending most weekends toiling against dour defensive formations that display no will to win at all. A team like Kilmarnock would struggle in the English Second Division and Celtic's inability to secure a result last night should be viewed in that perspective.

Substitutes Used
None