Aiden McGeady sent off as Celtic beat Hibs 1-0

Celtic have scored eight in their opening two league matches, but Tony Mowbray’s side passed their first serious examination of the domestic season with a 1-0 win over Hibernian at Easter Road on Sunday.

Leith has hardly been a happy hunting ground in recent seasons, with Celtic winning just one of their last six games there, but despite going down to 10 men after Aiden McGeady was controversially sent off, Celtic battled for the victory and took all three points.

That win was sealed by a Georgios Samaras strike, but Celtic’s steel was also evident, with the players defending courageously in the closing stages.

Tony Mowbray was forced to make a couple of changes to his starting XI, with Marc-Antoine Fortune out injured and replaced by Samaras and Landry NGuemo taking Massimo Donati’s place in the centre of midfield.

After a brief interruption, with Samaras going down injured within seconds of kick-off, play soon escalated to the somewhat frantic pace that has become the norm in such meetings in Edinburgh.

A couple of inviting crosses were fired into both penalty areas, but it took until the 12th minute before McGeady got the first clear sight of goal, disappointingly blasting his shot over.

Celtic soon enjoyed another glorious chance when Danny Fox swung in a wicked corner that Samaras sent crashing off the crossbar.

Scott McDonald was next to find space, failing to connect with a volley at the back post, but from this move the home side countered. McGeady brought down Derek Riordan, earning a yellow card, but Riordan sent his free kick just wide.

With their pace up front, Hibs were always going to be a threat on the counter-attack and minutes later, Artur Boruc was forced to parry a dangerously looking cross on the edge of his six-yard box, which was then hooked away by Shaun Maloney.

Then, on the half hour mark, Maloney had the ball in the back of the net, only for the referee to harshly rule that Samaras had climbed over Chris Hogg to win the header.

This was not the first peculiar decision that Dougie McDonald would make in this match, with the official failing to book Souleymane Bamba for a cynical foul on McGeady.

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Nster.com