Celtic rout St Mirren to continue 100% home record

Last updated on .From the section Scottish Premiership

Celtic continued their formidable domestic home form with an emphatic Scottish Premiership win against St Mirren.

Kyogo Furuhashi added a delicate lob before the break, and then finished off a sweeping move to ensure Celtic won an 11th consecutive home league game.

David Turnbull rifled in the fourth from 25 yards to seal the points.

Ange Postecoglou's side remain nine points clear of rivals Rangers after convincingly seeing off the only Scottish side to beat them this season.

St Mirren, who drop to seventh, are also the last to win at Celtic Park domestically almost two years ago, and they threatened to cause the champions more problems after a bright start.

But two minutes after Curtis Main's goal was ruled out for a tight offside, Abada smashed home from inside the box after Trevor Carson denied Carl Starfelt and debutant Yuki Kobayashi struck a post.

From that point, Celtic were in control. Reo Hatate's wonderful pass in behind found Kyogo, who managed to acrobatically scoop the ball over the advancing Carson and into the net.

And the Japanese forward added his 18th goal of the season eight minutes into the second half as Celtic struck quickly when winning possession in their own half.

Jota was set free down the left and crossed for Kyogo side-foot home, and the original decision to disallow the strike for offside was overturned after a VAR check.

Kyogo was then confirmed as offside by VAR after setting up James Forrest for what Celtic thought was their fourth goal, which did arrive in spectacular fashion from Turnbull.

The substitute clinically drove a long-range shot past Carson after a short corner from Celtic, who extended their unbeaten domestic home record to 40 matches.

St Mirren have still only won once on the road but kept plugging away, and came close to a consolation goal when Declan Gallagher headed Ryan Strain's cross on to the bar.

Celtic were sloppy before, and briefly after, Abada's goal as St Mirren took the game to them. Full-backs Josip Juranovic - who was playing out of position on the left - and Alistair Johnston were crowded out by St Mirren whenever they came infield, as is regularly the case with Celtic.

Postecoglou presumably told them to keep their width, because they started hugging the touchlines more and gave St Mirren's wing-backs and midfielders more to think about.

It stretched the visitors, and from there Celtic's movement and skill out wide took hold and there only looked like one outcome. Kyogo was a joy to watch as his rapid changes of direction and clever movement proved a constant menace.

St Mirren, meanwhile, can be relatively pleased with their efforts. That seems strange given the scoreline, but they started strongly and kept going in attack throughout. Stephen Robinson's side have only won one of their past 10 league games, but there is no immediate concern.

This is only the second time in that run they have lost by more than a goal, and they are far from the only Premiership team to go on a poor run. They need to respond quickly, but the evidence of this season so far is they will be pushing for a top-half finish.

What they said

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou: "I thought it was a really strong all-round performance. We did all the aspects of our game pretty well tonight. We started the game well.

"They have some threats, particularly from long throws, that you have to defend in the box and I thought we handled that well. It was four excellent goals and we had some great moves that didn't end in goals."

St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson: "Celtic were excellent. I think the disappointing thing for me is we conceded two set plays - our first all year. They didn't have to work for those two goals.

"We've done it fairly well up to now and shown that we do have the quality to break and pick passes, but we didn't tonight and we had too many people not at the top of their game and you can't come here and have that."

It is Scottish Cup weekend as Celtic host Morton in their fourth-round tie on Saturday (12:15 GMT), while St Mirren also host a side from the Championship in Dundee, who visit Paisley (15:00).