Sam Johnstone's Impressive Celtic Debut Secures Win
Sam Johnstone walked off McDiarmid Park with a grin as bright as the floodlights above him. After 21 months without a league appearance, the 33-year-old’s first Celtic outing felt worth the wait.
On loan from Wolves and dropped straight into a tight, nervy game, Johnstone helped Celtic grind out a 1-0 win over St Johnstone to keep their perfect league record intact. It was a hard shift, not a glamorous one. Exactly the kind of night where a goalkeeper earns trust.
He was a surprise name on the team sheet, preferred to Viljami Sinisalo for this trip to Perth. By full-time, the question was obvious: had he just played his way into the starting jersey for Sunday’s League Cup quarter-final at Ibrox?
Johnstone brought pedigree with him – four England caps underline that – but he still had to prove it in green and white. Over the course of 90 tense minutes, he did just that. Three saves, all from efforts inside the box, kept Celtic on course. The standout was a superb, instinctive tip-over from Joel Cotterill’s first-time strike, a moment that stopped the champions from falling behind and jolted the visitors into life.
He handled everything in the air, winning his only aerial duel and punching clear when required. With the ball at his feet he looked composed, completing 31 of 38 passes, five of them launched into the final third to relieve pressure and turn defence into attack. Late on, cramp crept in, a reminder of how long it had been since he last lived through a night like this.
"It's been a rollercoaster week, coming in and getting to know the lads and staff, training and watching a couple of games," Johnstone said afterwards. "So to finally get on the pitch and get a win, clean sheet, play in front of the fans, it was an unbelievable feeling. I'm really happy."
Martin O'Neill had rolled the dice with his goalkeeper selection. By the end, he admitted Johnstone’s performance had complicated his plans for Ibrox.
"The save was fantastic, a really, really brilliant reaction save," the Celtic manager said. "He's a fine goalkeeper and it's just a matter of him getting up to speed with things. Sinisalo's done very, very well indeed, and while I [ideally] do not want to use games like this, I have to find out about a number of players.
"We'll see what happens on Sunday but we've got loads and loads of games and it is really nice to know that I have actually two really decent goalkeepers."
From the stands and the gantry, the verdict was similar. Former Celtic goalkeeper Pat Bonner, watching on for BBC Sportsound, saw a keeper who looked like he belonged.
"Johnstone looked commanding and had that terrific reflex save. He did good, he'll be under more pressure in other games," Bonner said. "It will be interesting to see what the manager does now - does he keep him in or go with Sinisalo? Celtic have two good goalkeepers at the moment."
One game into his Celtic career, Johnstone has turned a straightforward hierarchy into a genuine debate. The clean sheet is in the book. The big save is on the highlights reel. The next chapter comes at Ibrox, where O’Neill must decide which of his “two really decent goalkeepers” he trusts with a derby that could shape the season’s early tone.
