Salzburg quickly forgotten as St Johnstone are smashed

The ongoing concern and rage after a poor European display followed by another routine domestic thumping is going to be a cycle we’ll need to get used to this season, but no one could have expected the complete decimation handed out to a club that are quickly becoming one of my most hated to play against in this league.

Celtic were always going to win this, let’s please not kid ourselves and say this was going to be a ‘tricky fixture’. St Johnstone are a team who are now there to make up the numbers against us, and are constantly devoid of any creativity and menace against Celtic, especially since Brendan Rodgers took over in 2016, and yesterday they somehow put in an even more laughable performance than they did when they clearly tried to play for penalties the other week in the League Cup, before Leigh Griffiths broke them down with minutes to spare.

We were up for it and you could tell our players knew the game was in the bag before a ball was kicked. Celtic’s travelling support making up the majority of the attendance contrasted with the home side’s two stands of dwindling numbers ? Pretty pathetic stuff, but then it’s St Johnstone after all who seem to be content with that state of affairs.

Tommy Wright, whose stock is still somewhat high in this country, looked like a lost man yesterday as Celtic zipped the ball about at pace, with precision and more importantly, with an end result, with James Forrest hitting an incredible four goals in a first half that saw Celtic at their most ruthless.

‘How could we no play lit this oan Thursday?’ many probably screamed in amongst the tribalism of laughing at the nick of the home side, but the answer to that is that we were ‘Celtic’d’ by Salzburg, whose resources and hungrier attitude at that level showed. We won’t come anywhere near the inept level of performance shown by St Johnstone in Europe, or even most weeks in the Scottish Premiership, but hopefully we can now put in a similar display after the international break.

Of course, we’ve been here before, putting in a fantastic performance before the last break, then coming back and acting like clowns who had forgotten what our day job was involving that baw and kicking it about with a bit of panache.

Many probably have put Salzburg to the back of their minds after that, I suppose I will have to as well. We’re now in the business of only being as good as our last game, and right now we’re back to being world class again.