Celtic Leap-Frog Rangers Into First Place Again

Celtic 3 St. Mirren 1

With Rangers losing to the Dons on Saturday, Celtic went top again with a comfortable win over St. Mirren at Parkhead.

St. Mirren came to play a defensive game, seemingly happy to limit the damage, but Celtic were able to take advantage of the opportunities that this gave them.

Scott McDonald and Georgios Samaras scored within three minutes of each other in the first half, McDonald taking advantage of a good through-pass from Samaras which he put into the back of the net - albeit with a deflection from defender Chris Innes.

Then McGeady, jumping up a loose ball, drove to the edge of the box where he delivered another good pass to Samaras, who side-footed the ball into the goal. Michael Higdon reduced Celtic's lead to one in the second half, but McDonald scored his second in the 61st minute when he volleyed the ball from the near post.

McDonald could have had a hat-trick in injury time when the referee Steve Conroy gave the home side a penalty after Innes handled a Robson corner, but his low shot to the left was saved well by former Scottish international goalkeeper Paul Gallacher.

Celtic manager Tony Mowbray was more pleased with this week's performance saying: "It was important just to win today. We didn't fluke it today, we could have won by more. We're happy to take the points.

"If we're going to be successful over a long, long period of time, we've got to make sure that the performance level is good and that we win by playing well every week but today we needed the three points.

"It was a pressurised day for us but we came through. Today, we did enough to win the football match and build on that.

"(The goal St Mirren scored) probably typifies us a little bit in the way we make things difficult for ourselves.

"But again we'll go through the process and ultimately we'll get to the point where the games won't be edgy, the games will be a confident, fast-flowing team believing that they're going to win every match but you have to go through the process we're going through at the moment.

"Scott's frustrated he didn't manage to tuck that penalty away to give himself a hat-trick but that's football."