Daizen Maeda scored two goals as Celtic beat Falkirk 3-1 on Saturday, a run of form that has produced three goals and two assists in six days and left the Japanese forward looking like the answer to Celtic’s attacking questions.
Maeda opened the scoring — his first league goal in 13 games — and added a second as Celtic moved to sit level on points with Hearts and a point clear of Rangers in the scotland league table after the weekend results. He had gone 18 matches without scoring before his first‑minute strike against St Mirren in the Scottish Cup semi‑final last week, and the quick sequence has converted critics into believers at a pivotal moment for the club.
The numbers underline the turnaround: three shots on target and 0.75 xG for Maeda across the match, and three goals and two assists in six days after a dry spell that stretched back to a goal against Dundee United at the start of January. Manager Martin O'Neill did not hide his relief. "I thought we saw it through and Maeda was fantastic," he said. "He got us a goal last week out of nothing in the first minute of the game, he scores two today, he's been fantastic."
O'Neill kept the praise coming, framing Maeda’s display as both timely and transformational. "He's really coming back to form and it's a good time for us at this minute. He was outstanding today," he said, then laughed about an offside near‑miss: "I was pleased the one that he missed was actually offside, otherwise I'd have killed him," adding, "No, you couldn't have done that today to him."
The boost matters because Celtic remain in the thick of two trophies: they are targeting a fifth successive league title and will play Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup final next month. While the points tally has them even with Hearts, both Hearts and Rangers retain a superior goal difference, a small but meaningful margin in a tight run‑in where every goal and every margin will count.
That tightness exposes the season‑long tension in Celtic’s forward line. The club have struggled at times for a clinical edge up front, and the arrival of Kelechi Iheanacho last September has not erased that debate; Iheanacho was not in Celtic's starting lineup against Falkirk. Pundit Chris Sutton picked up on the trade‑offs managers face: "That pressing is something which Martin O'Neill feels that Iheanacho can’t do," he said, while also conceding Iheanacho's different value to the side: "He can give Celtic greater quality, in terms of holding the ball in."
The friction is clear. Maeda’s two goals in the space of a week — including his strike inside the first minute at Hampden last week — have given Celtic a short‑term solution and momentum, but they have not erased the underlying question of whether the team have a consistently decisive striker over a long campaign. If Maeda keeps producing three‑goal, two‑assist bursts at this stage, Celtic's bid for a fifth successive league title will feel a lot less precarious; if not, the club will again face the familiar scramble for a finishing touch as fixtures and margins grow smaller.
