Gordon Strachan has Celtic firing on all cylinders

“Believe!” That was the mantra when Heart of Midlothian qualified for the Champions League in May 2006. Vladimir Romanov, never one to miss a marketing opportunity, had it printed on T-shirts given out to his players as they celebrated on the night they finished second in the title race to secure Champions League football.

The Edinburgh club never made it to the promised land of the group stages, falling at the last qualifying hurdle against AEK Athens, and belief has been in short supply around Tynecastle ever since. You cannot really see Gordon Strachan sanctioning any T-shirt message. It is not his style: the Celtic manager prefers actions to speak louder than words.

Belief is back in fashion at Celtic Park. It was everywhere on Saturday, as Strachan’s team swept Hearts aside to turn up the heat in the latest Clydesdale Bank Premier League title race. This is one team that will not be content with second place. A renewed sense of optimism was audible up in the packed stands, while out on the pitch the Celtic players delivered tangible proof that they are hitting technical, physical and psychological peaks.

Barcelona are next on the agenda, but the way Hearts were subdued illustrated that a domestic squabble has fired up Celtic as much as any European glamour. They sent out a mission statement to Rangers and want their Old Firm rivals to know they are now breathing down their necks. Hearts were no soft touch: Steve Frail’s team were robust and adventurous but they lacked the belief to take the chances that fell to them. Celtic, in contrast, had the belief to take almost everything that came their way.
Related Links

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Scott McDonald each displayed a predatory zeal in the six-yard box to score. That takes the so-called “struggling” partnership to 37 goals. Andreas Hinkel also weighed in with his first goal since joining in January from Seville.

Had Shunsuke Nakamura and Georgios Samaras not both been denied by the woodwork, then Hearts could have been given the same five-goal going-over suffered by Kilmarnock and Aberdeen in previous weeks.

Sometimes impending European assignments can hang over a league game on the weekend before, but it is doubtful if Barcelona even filtered through the minds of the supporters, never mind Strachan’s plans. “Our priority is the championship,” said the Celtic manager, whose own players were so hyped up that they even fell out with each other (Stephen McManus and Artur Boruc), and with the opposition management (Scott Brown and Frail).

Celtic have been answering the questions posed by Rangers’ leadership of the Premier League for some weeks now, but the response grows louder and more emphatic by the game. Rangers must have felt that Hearts could do them a favour, given that Frail’s side had won on their last visit to the east end of Glasgow - knocking Celtic out of the CIS Insurance Cup – and had won their last three league matches.

“This was a game between two teams who feel good about themselves,” Strachan said. “Fortunately, we have a team that feels very good about itself right now. The first 20 minutes is as good as we have played all season. It was terrific. Hearts have found good form recently and had not conceded any goals in the league in their last few games.

“We knew it would be a big day – and I think the crowd knew it was going to be a big day as well – and the players responded fantastically. Rangers are still in the lead and playing very well and very consistently. We appreciate the hard work ahead.”

Even when Vennegoor of Hesselink stabbed in Aiden McGeady’s thirteenth-minute cross, Hearts refused to buckle. Andrius Velicka ought to have buried the equaliser on the half-hour when Boruc parried Andy Driver’s shot into his path, but the Lithuanian only found the side net. Perhaps he was put off by McManus, throwing himself in to block the shot, minus one boot.

After Driver missed another one-on-one with Boruc early in the second half, McDonald swiftly punished the profligacy by meeting Nakamura’s corner to plant a header beyond Steve Banks and give Celtic a two-goal comfort zone. Four minutes later, Velicka hit a raking effort narrowly wide, and McManus and Boruc squared up to each other with anger in their eyes. “They like to keep clean sheets,” Strachan said, ruefully. “It did not get physical, just embarrassing.”

By the time the peerless McGeady had deftly turned Nakamura’s pass into the run of Hinkel, for the new right-back to thrash an angled shot beyond Banks in the 75th minute, Hearts were suffering. Yet Hinkel was impressed by the Tynecastle side’s refusal to just walk away quietly. “Hearts are one of the better teams in Scot-land,” the Germany player said. “They made it very difficult for us.”

Hinkel, like many an import before him, from Roy Keane to Ronald de Boer, is still adjusting to the fact that that you get no time on the ball in Scotland. The Premier League may not have the cachet of his previous work-place, La Liga, but it has an unforgiving knack of exposing newcomers. “The Spanish league is like the English league, the best in the world,” Hinkel said. “If you can play there, you can play anywhere. However, the style of football is different in every country.

“I have to learn what the football style is here. Last week, at Aberdeen, I felt I had more time in situations when I did not. You cannot wait to play the perfect ball, sometimes you have to kick it right away. I am feeling better with each game. It takes a long while to get the speed and the rhythm. For one-and-a-half years at Seville, I played only 32 times. I was stop-start. I would come in, play two games, then go out for two weeks.”

On this evidence, it is hard to believe that Hearts are mired in the bottom half of the table and are out of both cups. Frail, though, is imbued with deep faith. “I’ll make sure the heads don’t go down because we have a lot of big games coming up,” the Hearts coach said. “If we continue to show the improvement and commitment we have done in recent weeks, then, hopefully, we can push into the top six and take it from there.”

How they rated

Celtic (4-4-2): A Boruc 7 A Hinkel 6 S McManus 8 G Caldwell 7 L Naylor 7 S Nakamura 8 S Brown 9 M Donati 7 A McGeady 8 J Vennegoor 8 S McDonald 9 Substitutes G Samaras (for Vennegoor, 71min), B Robson (for Donati, 76), B Hutchison (for McDonald, 87) Not used M Brown, D O’Dea, E Sno, P Hartley.

Hearts of Midlothian (4-4-2): S Banks 8 R Neilson 7 C Karipidis 6 C Berra 7 J Goncalves 7 D Cesnauskis 5 R Palazuelos 5 E Jonsson 7 A Ksanavicius 7 A Driver 5 A Velicka 6 Substitutes S Mikoliunas 4 (for Cesnauskis, 67min), C Nade (for Ksanavicius, 71) Not used A Basso, L Wallace, M Zaliukas, N McCann, C Elliot.

Taken from timesonline.co.uk