Celtic need to start scoring goals or this title dream could slip away very quickly

Sitting watching Celtic’s game against St. Mirren on Saturday, I began to wonder if this side’s inability to put teams to bed could be our undoing in this title run-in?

League football takes a back burner next weekend.

The distraction of the cup is as welcome as it is necessary right now.

Celtic needs to play in a game where the shackles are off for both sides, where it becomes open and eventually, caution has to be thrown to the wind if you want to be in the final.

Saturday was a dress rehearsal of sorts for next Sunday.

In reality, though, we didn’t learn much from what turned out to be another nerve jangling experience in a long line of that kind of experience all season.

Can Celtic win the title playing like we did on Saturday?

Well, based on the way our main rivals played over the weekend, our lack of goals could cost us.

Look, I get that we’re grinding out the results week after week.

As Martin O’Neill said on Saturday, the 3 points are all that matter.

That’s true, its points that will win the league in the end as its unlikely to come down to goal difference.

If it does, we ain’t winning it, its that simple.

But what concerns me is the fact that if we were to go 1 or 2 goals behind our main rivals in the games against them during the run in, do we have it in us to come back and win.

Well, in the middle part of this season, we’ve shown that we have.

And again, at Ibrox recently, we showed very good powers of recovery.

However, it seems that lately, goals are getting very hard to come by.

Tomáš Čvančara is suffering a crisis of confidence at the worst possible time.

Kelechi Iheanacho huffs and puffs a lot, but he isn’t exactly blowing the house down either of late.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain looks more likely to score goals for Celtic than either striker does.

Saturday’s showing tells us that this title run-in is going to be a nerve shredding affiar.

But like it or not, whatever the outcome next weekend – after that – Celtic are somehow going to have find their shooting boots.

On Saturday, we once again persisted with the 4-3-3 formation.

Yes, I’m blue in the face from talking about it now, and I know it isn’t going to change between now and the end of the season.

But what really baffled me was the fact that neither player on the wing was substituted against St. Mirren.

What has Sebastian Tounekti done of late to piss Martin O’Neill off so much?

With goals our major concern at the moment, Daizen Maeda looks totally disinterested.

There is none of the running, none of the pressing, that we’ve grown accustomed to from him any more.

At least when Tounekti comes on, he runs at defence.

He tries to unlock them.

Yet, he hasn’t even made it off the bench in the last two outings.

Tounekti can create goals, and he does have the ability to score them too.

So why is he not being utlilised?

Maybe after Maeda’s lacklustre showing on Saturday, Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney might think differently about using him during the title run-in?

Its hard to know what their mindset is, but our lack of a goal scoring touch is a cause for concern.

Could it be our undoing in the end?

That’s hard to know too, simply because we keep on grinding out results.

Both the Ibrox side and Hearts showed over the weekend that they have goals in them.

Which is what worries me about their upcoming visits to Celtic Park.

Will our strikers and wingers come alive for those games?

You really have to hope so.

Otherwise it could be a pretty painful end to this season to forget.

Let’s hope we make it one to remember.

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