Football: Pleasure and Pain of the Beautiful Game; CELTIC 3 HIBS 2 Hoops and Hibs Serve Up Cracker for the Fans but It's Pure Torture for Strachan and Lenny

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Byline: By Hugh Keevins

GORDON STRACHAN reckons the fans would have a restful night while he and Tony Mowbray would be the victims of insomnia as they fret over losing five goals.

What a financially rewarding but soul-destroying business club management must be for people who feel tortured in the midst of extreme pleasure.

This was the best SPL game of the season and it saw 59,895 people being entertained in a way they had forgotten was possible between the hours of 3pm. and 4.45pm on a Saturday.

It was a reminder of the reason why we all like football in the first place but the Celtic manager and his captain, Neil Lennon, were racked by guilt.

Maybe Strachan had given the game away the day before the match when he claimed Celtic were suffering from a form of emotional scarring that would need the league flag to act as cosmetic surgery.

Strachan and the Irishman - who made one, unpunished mistake in the match - were steely-eyed and cold-hearted in their assessment of something that was a source of enjoyment to everybody else.

The boss said: 'I was having palpitations. You name it, I was having it. The fans can have a restful night but …