A late Sean Maloney effort was enough to secure all three points for Scotland at Parkhead as they took on the Republic of Ireland in the 2016 European Championship Qualifers.
Ireland started the brightest with Jonathan Walters and Darren Gibson coming close early on, however the home side then asserted their dominance with Charlie Mulgrew and Steven Whittaker both coming close to opening the scoring. Gordon Strachan’s side continued their good play in the second half with Chris Martin having chances before Maloney curled in his effort to secure the victory with 15 minutes to go.
It was an open affair from the kick off, when Walters tested David Marshall after two minutes, but the effort on goal was easy to gather for the keeper.
Scotland could have counted themselves lucky that they weren’t down to ten men when Shane Long managed to get the better of Grant Hanley, before the defender brought the striker down. At a second glance it could be considered that he denied Long a goal scoring opportunity but Hanley managed to get away with the yellow.
From there on in Scotland began to get a foothold in the game, but the Irish defence proved difficult to break down. John O’Shea got ahead of Steven Naismith to an Ikechi Anya pullback, Sean Maloney curled in another good ball into the box finding Mulgrew but he put his header wide of the post. Whittaker then made some space for himself to cut inside from the wing but his shot was a weak one and one that David Forde gathered with relative ease.
Ireland looked promising at the beginning of the second half when only a defensive header prevented Walters getting on the end of an Aiden McGeady cross, it was the Stoke striker that caused trouble again minutes later when his header got a late touch from Long but Marshall was unfazed and collected the ball. Marshall did very well to keep the scores level when McGeady’s volley bounced in front of him but he managed to get a hand on it to force it wide.
Gordon Strachan decided to bring on Derby striker Chris Martin to get the crucial opener and the striker came so close in quick succession, Martin looked to steer his header goalwards but it was well off target and he was then found by Naismith who did well to get into the area but he curled it just wide of the post.
Walters came close to putting the ball in to his own net in the 73rd minute when his attempted clearance from the costless kick rattled off the bar.
Scotland finally took the lead a minute later, a well worked corner came to Maloney who played it off to Scott Brown who then back heeled brilliantly back into the path of Maloney and the midfielder curled it beautifully into the far corner sending Celtic Park into hysteria.
Ireland kept pushing for the equaliser and had scored late goals against Georgia and Germany in their last two qualifiers and Martin O’Neill’s side came ever close to doing it once again. Substitute Robbie Brady’s curled a brilliant ball into the area which came off the head of the Hanley which came back off the crossbar but Scotland managed to hold on for the victory.
Ireland were poor on the day with very few clear-cut chances but have shown in their previous games that this was just a blip and could still compete for a place at the Euros. Scotland started the weaker of the two sides but showed their quality and got the victory they deserved, England are the next opponents that will come to Celtic Park and if Scotland can perform like they did tonight and have so far under Strachan they could cause Roy Hodgson’s squad some problems on Tuesday.