GLASGOW — Callum Osmand had played 28 minutes of league football this season when Celtic manager Martin O’Neill gave the 20-year-old his first start for the club against Hearts on Sunday. By the 38th minute he had scored twice, Celtic led 4-0, and Hearts were on their way to a 7-1 defeat at Celtic Park.
Goal.com reported that Osmand came off the bench in May’s title decider against the same club, set up the 2-2 equaliser and scored the winner. Hearts returned to Celtic Park for the first time since May, Sky Sports reported, hoping to exact some revenge. Instead Celtic moved four points clear at the top of the Scottish Premiership.
The match turned on two corners in ten minutes, both taken by Mika Baur. Liam Scales headed the first across to Kieran Tierney, who nodded in after seven minutes. Dane Murray flicked the second on to Benjamin Nygren, whose deflected volley made it 2-0 in the tenth. Hearts head coach Wouter Vrancken pointed straight at them afterwards.
Osmand’s first goal came in the 36th minute, when he pounced on what Sky Sports reported as a terrible pass from Sabri Guendouz. Two minutes later he headed in the rebound after Camilo Duran was denied. Laurent Mendy pulled one back for Hearts in the 41st. Then Baur cut through and flicked the ball over goalkeeper Reus, and Stephen Kingsley knocked it over his own line off team-mate Jamie McCart, so it went down as an own goal. Duran curled in the sixth in the 49th minute and Nygren added the seventh in the 83rd.
Vrancken told Sky Sports it was “really disappointing because of the way it happened, especially when you let them score from two set-plays”. After that, he said, came “a lot of individual mistakes, and then it was all open”. Sky Sports also noted that Hearts have been winless away from Edinburgh since January.
Goal.com reported that the Edinburgh Evening News called Hearts’ display “defensive suicide”. Sky Sports pundit Kris Boyd went further: “That there was an annihilation. I mean, I have never seen anything like it in my life.”
O’Neill told Sky Sports he had been “concerned after Thursday night, wondering how we feel, can we get ourselves together for it?” Goal.com said Celtic lost 4-1 at Benfica in the Europa League last Thursday, and quoted O’Neill calling Sunday “the perfect response to the disappointments in Europe”.
The table has rough edges. Sky Sports has Celtic four points clear. Goal.com counts eight ahead of Hearts and four ahead of Rangers, who drew 2-2 at Dundee on Saturday. O’Neill praised Osmand’s movement and hunger, Goal.com said. Neither report says whether that earns him another start.
