St Mirren 1-2 Celtic: Guidetti double signals Hoops’ title intention

Champions stay on track.

Celtic gave the lie to the old phrase, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be’ with a resilient comeback victory.

There were debates, seemingly endless debates, about whether he scored the first goal or it should be go down in the record books as an own goal from Jim Goodwin.

But make no mistake; the Hoops owed this success to John Guidetti the most prominent of their five loan pick-ups in the summer.

Brought in on a season-long deal from Manchester City, the 22 year old Swede was one of the most interesting moves of a window that saw newly appointed manager Ronny Deila keen to strengthen, but reluctant to risk too much in doing so.

Signed by the Sky Blues as a 16-year-old, Guidetti’s career has been a string of temporary moves.

A spell in Holland with Feyenoord, where he averaged nearly a goal a game and grabbed three hat-tricks, pointed up some decent ability.

And, after getting off the mark with a goal against Hearts in the League Cup on Wednesday night, he followed up here by also breaking his Premiership duck.

With just under half an hour of the game remaining he raced onto a clever ball from Anthony Stokes and smashed the ball past Marian Kello to secure his team victory. What happened earlier was not so clear.

Emilio Izaguirre started things off with an exchange of passes with Anthony Stokes.

From there Scott Brown was sent scampering in behind, where he looked up and picked out Guidetti.

He only got a thin contact on the ball, but luck was on his side because the ball came back off keeper Marian Kello’s body and into the on-rushing Goodwin for a cruel own goal.

Or was it?

Guidetti said: “The referee came to me before the second half and said, ‘John I have given you the goal’ and you know what they say don’t argue with the officials.

“To be absolutely fair, I was going to tap it in and then I got smashed for about the third time by their number 6 (Goodwin), so I didn’t really know which planet I was on.

“I was about to appeal for a red card (against Goodwin), but then I saw the ball was in the back of then net.”

If it wasn’t an entirely truthful view of the incident, the St Mirren player/coach was more than happy to play along.

“I would prefer you give it to him, so if you want to give it to him, go for it,” said Goodwin with a laugh that suggested he knew the dubious goals panel would beg to differ.

“As a defender you don’t want an own goal going against you, but yeah…

“I tried to do the best with it I could, I got back in and from there I think it came off Guidetti and then came back off me and went in.”

Bhoys boss Deila was perhaps more interested in what his fellow Scandinavian brings to the party, praising the energy and ambition the player showed before going off with a hamstring injury.

No wonder. Those two qualities were vital on a day when the champions huffed and puffed, but nevertheless were struggling to blow Saints’ house down.

It didn’t help they contributed to the goal they conceded, with keeper Craig Gordon throwing the ball straight to Sean Kelly.

The former Scotland international was able to block Jason Naismith’s subsequent effort with a fine diving save but was beaten all ends up by Kenny McLean’s follow up.

Better clearly will be required when Dinamo Zagreb come to town on Europa League business on Thursday night.

Guidetti will miss the tie because he ineligible, but Ronny Deila remains hopeful of having both Kris Commons, who missed yesterday’s game with what his boss described as a “butt” injury, and young centre back Jason Denayer fit to play.