Celtic star shoots down claim over team and makes observation over Parkhead crowd

The Premiership champions scored two goals in the dying stages of Sunday’s league clash against Aberdeen to maintain the gap between them and leaders Hearts at six points.

The Dons, down to ten men, cancelled out Benjamin Nygren’s opener on 75 minutes through Kenan Bilalovic. However, Celtic responded emphatically and pressed for a winner, with Kieran Tierney netting ten minutes later and then Forrest himself adding a third in stoppage time.

It was Celtic’s first win at the fifth attempt under new manager Wilfried Nancy and afforded the French coach and his players some breathing space going into the weekend clash against Livingston. Failure to beat the Dons would have heaped even more pressure on the 48-year-old.

Since his arrival on December 3, Nancy’s 3-4-3 formation has been questioned and some pundits have asked whether there is full buy-in from the players, who had won seven of their previous eight matches under caretaker boss Martin O’Neill. However, Forrest claimed that the manner of Celtic’s victory over Aberdeen showed everyone is “together”.

“We could have maybe won the game 1-0 there and it would have been good,” said Forrest. “But I think just for everyone, even the fans in the last ten minutes, they did get behind us. They knew that we were creating loads of chances and I think that's what we need to do.

Celtic want to give the fans something back

“We need to give the fans something to cheer about and get behind us. I think with the performance, I think we can all come together and just keep picking up more games and more performances like Sunday.

“I think it showed a lot of character from the boys and the fans behind us as well, especially off the back of the four defeats. We scored two in the last five minutes and we looked strong at the end.

“Nobody's heads went down. We just kept going and we kept creating the chances. I think that's what you need to do if you're maybe not getting that luck around the box. Obviously, we don't want to get carried away. It's still so early in the season. It's still really early for the manager as well. But I think it just shows that we are together and I just look forward to Saturday now.”

Forrest, 34, has been at Celtic for 17 years and admitted he had not experienced anything like the dip in form or the schism between fans and the board during his long spell at the club.

"It's difficult,” he added. “I think I've been here for so long, I've had so much success, so many good moments. I'd say the kind of ten-in-a-row season but then obviously that was Covid and the fans weren't in so there was something different about that one. I'd say maybe nothing really kind of like the last couple of weeks.

“Obviously, we've had a couple of different managers and stuff as well, but I think that just shows that we all need to make sure we stay together and that's what we have done the last couple of weeks. Hopefully, we can just go game at a time, build back up the confidence and as you saw on Sunday, we could have scored six or seven goals but we kept going and we managed to get the win in the end.”