There haven’t been too many bugbears for Brendan Rodgers about his Celtic side of late. One clearly irking the Irishman, though, comes from when his players are put on the spot. Literally. And though it could appear random, it seems as if keeper Joe Hart wouldn’t object to the opportunity of being placed right there to resolve a recent issue, one brought into sharp focus by David Turnbull smacking a penalty against the upright in the club’s 2-1 win at home to St Mirren. The miss came a little more than a fortnight after Reo Hatate’s attempted conversion in the 3-0 success against Hearts at Tynecastle met the same fate.

These two failures mean Celtic have now only a 60 per cent success rate from the five penalties they have been awarded this season. However, Rodgers has identified a problem stretching back further owing to three out of 11 spot-kicks across their treble-winning season not finding the net. Moreover, with the aberrations from Turnbull and Hatate, four of the Irishman’s team mainstays now have such misses to their name owing to Callum McGregor and Kyogo Furuhashi also having a flawed record for the club.

All of which comes at a time when a clip has been doing the rounds on social media of Hart emphatically blasting in from the 12-yard mark in his Manchester City days. The 36-year-old has form in this department – though not of the perfect variety – going back to the formative days of his two decade senior career.

Atletico Madrid's Antoine Griezmann has a penalty saved by Celtic's Joe Hart - could the goalkeeper also prove decisive at the other end?

“I’ve never been scared to stick my hand up for penalties,” the Celtic keeper said. “That one [on the internet] was in a game for City against Roma in one of those pre-season competitions [in 2015]. You’d often go to penalties if it was a draw and I’d always put myself forward. I’ve taken a couple in the senior game. I took one for Shrewsbury when I was 17 and another one for England in the under-21 Euros. I scored that one and hit the bar in the other one – but I scored all the ones I took in pre-season.

“I love that side of the game but there’s definitely a queue in front of me here. Our record could be better. We’ve missed two this season but we won both games so it didn’t hurt us too much. Obviously it’s a great opportunity. The other night it could have put us 2-1 up but we kept our heads to keep going and get the goal.”

More pertinent to Hart is that he has managed to save two in the Champions League this season – having prevented only one of the previous 13 he has faced ending up in the net since he came to Glasgow in the summer of 2021. “My record has always been good but I came up here and couldn’t dive the right way for two years...” he said. “It wasn’t through lack of trying or training or anything, it’s just how it goes. This year I went the right way twice. I hope I don’t have to face many more, but if I do I’ll be using the same kind of techniques and hopefully that will work.”

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