Celtic didn’t play St Johnstone this weekend. Here’s why that’s actually good news

Why the SPFL let Celtic push the fixture back

Celtic supporters who cleared their Saturday afternoon for the trip to McDiarmid Park didn’t get a game, and the reason has nothing to do with Martin O’Neill’s health. The William Hill Premiership fixture against St Johnstone was postponed under an SPFL rule that lets clubs involved in UEFA qualifying play-offs push back a round-three domestic fixture, and Celtic took up that option ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League play-off second leg in Linz. It means Celtic’s next league game isn’t until August 29 against Falkirk, a 21-day gap since their last Premiership outing.

What actually happened against LASK

The reason they wanted the extra preparation time is obvious once you’ve seen what happened in the first leg. BBC Sport’s report on Celtic’s 3-0 win over LASK at Celtic Park described Camilo Duran scoring twice either side of a Benjamin Nygren opener, with LASK having two goals of their own ruled out for offside along the way. It was a genuinely difficult night by O’Neill’s own admission, not the one-sided scoreline it eventually became. “I thought it was a really tough evening for us,” he said afterwards. “They are a really good side. We’ve got our work cut out still, but we’ve given ourselves a chance.”

O’Neill’s health scare, now in the rear-view

The postponement draws a line under the uncertainty that had surrounded O’Neill’s own health earlier this month, when the 74-year-old spent a night in hospital for what the club described only as “a small procedure” and missed Celtic’s 5-1 win over Kilmarnock with assistant Shaun Maloney taking the touchline in his place. O’Neill was back in the dugout for the LASK win and has now overseen four wins from four in all competitions this season, with Camilo Duran’s arrival looking like exactly the kind of statement signing a manager needs when he’s also managing questions about his own fitness for the job.

The market’s read on the second leg

There’s a betting angle running quietly underneath all of this. Celtic are now as short as 1/12 to reach the Champions League league phase after that first-leg result, with LASK out to 7/1 in the same market, even with the second leg still to come. Gambling.com, which reviews the UK’s latest casino launches alongside its sportsbook coverage, is the kind of resource fans have increasingly turned to for tracking exactly those market shifts around Scottish and European football, where a single postponed domestic fixture can move a price as much as a result does.

O’Neill isn’t taking anything for granted

A place in the Champions League league phase, and the revenue that comes with it, is still in the balance despite the three-goal cushion, and O’Neill was careful not to treat it as already won. Goal.com’s write-up of the win quoted O’Neill saying “it was a great result for us tonight, but there is a long way to go,” pointing to LASK’s own expected-goals tally of 1.75 from 20 attempts against Celtic’s 0.87 as evidence the gap on the pitch was tighter than the final score suggested.

A free weekend nobody else capitalised on

Rivals haven’t exactly used the free weekend to close the gap either. Rangers and Hearts both dropped points on the Premiership’s opening weekend under their own new managers, meaning Celtic sit top regardless of the postponement, and O’Neill has already flagged that recruitment isn’t finished, telling Celtic’s own media he’s “hoping we get some players in” before the transfer window shuts. Whatever happens in Linz on Tuesday, the manager who missed a game through illness three weeks ago now has his side unbeaten, four goals clear at the top domestically, and one result away from a Champions League group-phase return. Given how comfortably Celtic have handled every question thrown at them so far this season, our full read on why doubting Martin O’Neill has become a losing bet is looking better with every passing week rather than worse.

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