Celtic restored their nine point lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership

After the interval, Celtic broke down Dundee United's tenacious fight to regain a nine-point advantage over the competition.On their most recent trip to Tannadice in August, the Glasgow team destroyed United 9-0 to achieve the largest away league victory in the club's history.Up until Jota headed in an Aaron Moore cross, a more tenacious United managed to hold its own.Five minutes later, Mooy converted a penalty when Kieran Freeman's hand was hit by Jota's flick.Celtic has scored 18 goals and allowed just one goal in their past five trips to Tannadice, their fifth straight game without giving up a goal.United are now without a point and are level for third place on goal differential with Motherwell, Ross County, and Kilmarnock.With 19 games played against Celtic since a 2-1 victory at Tannadice in December 2014, United now finds itself in third-bottom position on goal differential, level for third place in the standings with Motherwell, Ross County, and Kilmarnock.Prior to the game, both coaches concurred that United had improved since that humiliating loss in August.The busier goalkeeper, though, was Mark Birighitti, who was lucky not to have Kyogo Furuhashi charge down a clearing from behind him before blocking at the Japan striker's feet and save low from a Jota drive.Before Birighitti valiantly punched Kyogo's head clear of the United goal, Craig Sibbald stopped Mooy in front of the net, and referee Don Robertson pointed to the spot after the striker.was furthermore stopped by the goalie as he pursued the ball.Robertson changed his mind after being told to run a check on the screen.After the break, though, Birighitti seemed to lose his focus as Jota accurately headed in from an awkward angle after Mooy delivered a deep cross.Soon after, Celtic sealed the victory when Freeman extended a hand, giving Mooy the chance to score his third goal in as many games from the penalty spot while the visitors could comfortably afford a close-range miss from Daizen Maeda in the last seconds.

The statistics favour Celtic: an evaluation

This game didn't have a record score, although Tannadice saw a lot of large scores.Since their lone domestic loss—a road loss at St. Mirren in September—Celtic has gone 19 games without a loss, with their only other loss coming in a tie at second-place Rangers.It was Ange Postecoglou's 50th victory in 61 Premier League contests, matching Brendan Rodgers' record; only Martin O'Neill accomplished the feat in two less contests.On his 400th Celtic match, captain Callum McGregor was immaculate in the middle, while Oh Hyeon-gyu, the hastily acquired South Korean striker from Suwon, made his debut off the bench.Ryan Edwards, the captain of the United team, lost despite being in the starting lineup for his 100th club appearance. However, his team seemed to have improved since their loss at Celtic Park in November, when they were only defeated by two injury-time goals.Although they were unable to equal their own two goals this time and hardly presented a threat to the home team's goalkeeper Joe Hart, they have now won three games in a row and manager Liam Fox has reason to hope they can avoid the drop.

What they said

Liam Fox, the manager of Dundee United, said, "I can't take positives right now; I'm hurt and disappointed." We have a big game on Wednesday, so we don't have time to mope about."I was relieved to see the score at 0-0 at the interval since I believed we were just hanging on. We needed to be more daring on the ball and more proficient in possession since, in my opinion, we didn't threaten enough." We let up two fast goals, making the remainder of the day very challenging."

Ange Postecoglou, manager of Celtic: "I think we managed it well, the challenging circumstances. They had fairly strict organisation, especially in the first half. Despite this, there were a few times when we fell behind them."We missed that finishing touch and quality, but we started the second half incredibly well, scored a couple goals, and could have scored a couple more," the team said. A very impressive performance.