Dundee 4
Celtic 1
League (Premier Division)

Match Report

Newspaper extract from The Sunday Post.

Celtic have been stumbling a bit of late. Well, this time they fell flat on their faces, writes A Sunday Post Reporter.

They were completely unbalanced by a superb second-half performance by a fighting Dundee side. Amazingly, this was the Dens Parkers first league win of 1987. That's what I call breaking your duck in style.

In a pretty undistinguished first half there had been little to choose between the sides. Dundee were perhaps a little unlucky to find themselves behind when McClair took a short free-kick from McStay and drove the ball into the far corner of the net.

But within a minute of the restart this game came to the boil.

Jack made a superb run up the left. Brown took over and swept the ball across the face of the goal to where the unmarked Mennie was waiting to shoot past Bonner.

Some of the Celtic players looked as if they couldn't fathom what was going wrong at this point. They were positively perplexed when the Dark Blues hit them with two goals in two minutes.

First, Forsyth drove up the right wing, cut in and laid a perfect pass in the path of Shannon, who smashed the ball high

into the net. Then another fine run, this time from Mennie, ended with Brown heading home his cross.

Dundee really rubbed it in when Shannon cracked a great shot off the underside of the bar. The ball fell to Jack who had the easiest task in scoring.

Four good goals, and they all had one thing in common-the Celtic defence was all over the place when the ball went in the net.

All credit to the Dundee players, but manager Jocky Scott deserves a mention, too. He came up with the perfect game-plan for this match.

Glennie, Duffy and Smith played together in central defence. This meant that Johnston and McClair rarely got a look at goal.

Full-back Forsyth (despite the number 7 on his back) and McKinlay pushed forward into midfield, denying the Celts room to come up with anything creative.

This left Coyne and Jack up front and this pair pulled the Parkhead defenders all over Dens Park, opening up spaces for Brown, Mennie and Shannon to come storming through.

Not many Celts will want to include this game in their memoirs. Only Bonner, McStay, and young Smith came anywhere near their usual form.

There were three bookings - Mennie for tripping Grant, and Glennie and McClair for dissent