{"id":12653,"date":"2026-04-10T18:40:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=12653"},"modified":"2026-04-10T18:40:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:40:25","slug":"scottish-premiership-whats-next-in-captivating-title-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=12653","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Premiership: What&#8217;s next in captivating title race?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Part of Celtic&#8217;s relative struggles has been their inability to find a consistent striking option. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Johnny Kenny &#8211; loaned to Bolton in January &#8211; is still their highest-scoring centre forward this season, with midfielder Benjamin Nygren leading the way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Daizen Maeda has often been shifted inside off his preferred left flank and has struggled to replicate his form from previous campaigns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kelechi Iheanacho was signed on a free by former boss Brendan Rodgers, but has been unable to build up a head of steam because of injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">January arrivals Tomas Cvancara and Junior Adamu have failed to nail down a starting berth &#8211; Adamu has been substituted at half-time in both his league starts and has not been in the matchday squad for two of Celtic&#8217;s past three league games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cvancara was substituted at Dens Park last weekend, having missed a flurry of chances, and his replacement Iheanacho slammed in a dramatic late winner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Manager Martin O&#8217;Neill has spoken more than once about how his team cannot afford many &#8211; if any &#8211; more slip-ups in their final six league matches, and he could do with some consistency in forward areas to achieve it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The defending champions might have the easiest fixture of the top three on paper this weekend but St Mirren have won back-to-back games under interim manager Craig McLeish and are battling to avoid the dreaded relegation play-off. The two sides will meet again in next Sunday&#8217;s Scottish Cup semi-final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It seems likely O&#8217;Neill will start Iheanacho after his impact off the bench against Dundee. How he and his club would love the Nigeria striker to go on a hot streak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Part of Celtic&#8217;s relative struggles has been their inability to find a consistent striking option. Johnny Kenny &#8211; loaned to Bolton in January &#8211; is still their highest-scoring centre forward this season, with midfielder Benjamin Nygren leading the way. Daizen Maeda has often been shifted inside off his preferred left flank and has struggled to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}