Celtic Edge St. Johnstone: O’Neill’s Brutal Verdict
On paper, it looks routine. A 1–0 win, three points banked, top-end numbers in every metric that usually matters. On the touchline, Martin O’Neill saw something very different.
Celtic controlled the ball, claimed 60% possession, racked up an xG of 2.22 to St. Johnstone’s 0.77 and fired 15 shots, 9 of them on target. The scoreboard, though, refused to reflect their dominance. One goal. Just enough. Nowhere near enough for their manager.
The night carried a subplot before a ball was kicked. The teamsheet dropped and one name was missing: Camilo Durán. The Colombian, Celtic’s livewire summer signing, was out of the starting XI. O’Neill had rolled the dice.
Durán had looked leggy against St. Mirren, O’Neill explained later, and the numbers back up the workload. Nine games this season across the Premiership, League Cup and Champions League qualifiers. Six goals. Three assists. A direct contribution in every single outing. Celtic’s attack has been built around his relentlessness.
So O’Neill tried to see if his side could cope without him.
Durán watched most of this one from the bench, only thrown on for the final 17 minutes. By then, Celtic had huffed and puffed, pressed and probed, but never truly torn St. Johnstone apart. The patterns were there, the pressure was there; the cutting edge wasn’t.
Afterwards, speaking to Clyde 1 Superscoreboard, O’Neill didn’t bother dressing it up. He admitted the experiment had failed and, in doing so, fired a warning shot to the rest of his forwards.
Durán, he said, has been “just class.” The manager pointed to the St. Mirren game, where the Colombian still found an assist despite looking tired. Before that, against Aberdeen on September 2, he had produced a goal and an assist in 75 minutes. He covers ground, he harries defenders, he links play. With the ball, O’Neill called him “terrific.” Without it, he is a pressing machine.
Only Daizen Maeda closes down more aggressively, O’Neill noted. That is elite company in this Celtic side. The manager wanted to know if his team could live without that engine. His conclusion was stark: “The answer is probably not.”
It is a remarkable admission so early in Durán’s Celtic career. Signed in the summer from Qarabag for €5.5 million, he has wasted no time becoming indispensable. His minutes tell a story: 83 against St. Mirren on September 5, 75 against Aberdeen three days earlier, then just 17 here. Rested, rotated, but not really replaceable.
The message between the lines was loud. Celtic might have enough talent to dominate a game, but without Durán’s edge and intensity, they look a different animal. Less ruthless. Easier to live with.
And the timing of that realisation could not be more important.
September is about to turn hostile. Celtic now walk into a defining run: Rangers twice in the space of a week, with Europe squeezed in between. First comes the Scottish League Cup quarterfinal against their oldest rivals on Sunday, September 13. Then the Premiership clash with Rangers on September 20, another derby that could shape the early title narrative.
Wedged between those two battles is the opening night of their UEFA Europa League campaign, a home tie against Ferencvaros on September 17. Three high-stakes games. Three very different demands. No margin for sloppiness like the kind O’Neill saw against St. Johnstone.
Complicating matters further, Celtic will be without Yang Hyun-jun for that run. The South Korean winger heads off to the Asian Games with his national team, leaving another gap in the attacking rotation at precisely the moment O’Neill needs every option he can trust.
So the St. Johnstone win becomes more than just another narrow league victory. It becomes a warning shot, a reminder that Celtic’s structure and style still rely heavily on a handful of key cogs. Durán, in particular, has moved from promising signing to near-essential in a matter of weeks.
O’Neill has his answer about life without him. Now the question is whether Celtic’s other forwards can change it before Rangers and Europe expose the same flaw on a much bigger stage.
