Celtic's players found a whole new way of embarrassing themselves in public last night, managing to lose a match they should have won comfortably.
Mostly on top in outfield play, they missed two penalties - one by Simon Donnelly, the other by Craig Burley - scored an owngoal through Regi Blinker and had Darren Jackson sent off when retaliation incurred his second yellow card after 80 minutes.
David Rowson, the young Aberdeen midfielder, was red-carded three minutes later for a crude challenge on Jackie McNamara. It seemed hardly credible that the visitors could be awarded a third penalty; but they were, in the fourth minute of stoppage time, when John Inglis fouled Enrico Annoni. This time Henrik Larsson drove the ball past Jim Leighton.
Celtic under Jozef Venglos play a more attacking game, but there are times when that leads merely to showing how good they are at passing up good scoring chances.
They should, for example, have established a telling lead by the interval, after a first half in which they were not only dominant but created two golden opportunities. Instead they fell behind to an extraordinary goal from Mark Perry.
Aberdeen's skirmishing had been energetic rather than imaginative or penetrative, and another move seemed to have collapsed when the ball dropped to Perry some 25 yards out. The tall midfielder, a converted defender, hit it on the volley and the ball described a parabola before dropping behind Jonathan Gould at his left-hand corner.
To the Celtic support, that first goal probably seemed a retrievable mishap - until the follies of the second half.
When Anderson, in the 50th minute, handled Blinker's corner kick from the right it was assumed that Craig Burley would convert the penalty.- as he had to score the winner on Celtic's last visit to Pittodrie. Instead Donnelly took on the job and drove the ball against Leighton's post.
The next piece of nonsense was perpetrated by Blinker, who ran back to meet a long free-kick from Gary Smith and headed the ball past the advancing Gould to double Aberdeen's lead.
That arrived only six minutes after the missed penalty, and three minutes later the home side were three ahead. It was a beautiful pass from Eoin Jess into the right side of the area which released Craig Hignett and the former Middlesbrough man dragged the ball wide of Gould before drilling it low into the net from 15 yards.
Donnelly had been replaced by Harald Brattbakk by the time Paul Lambert was brought down by Derek Whyte, and this time Burley allowed Leighton to save the kick with a dive to his left. Larsson made sure of the third penalty, but by then Celtic had run out of time.
ABERDEEN: Leighton, Perry, Whyte, Inglis, Smith, Hignett, Jess (Buchan 83), Dodds, Kiriakov, Anderson, Rowson. Subs Not Used: Dow, Gillies, Young, Stillie. Sent Off: Rowson (83). Booked: Jess. Goals: Perry 39, Blinker 56 og, Hignett 59.
CELTIC: Gould, Boyd, McNamara, Rieper, Larsson, Burley, Donnelly (Brattbakk 63), Blinker, Lambert, Jackson, Annoni. Subs Not Used: MacKay, Kerr, McBride, Burchill. Sent Off: Jackson (80). Booked: Lambert, Jackson, McNamara, Blinker. Goals: Larsson 69, 90 pen.
Referee: W Young (Clarkston).
