Rob Maclean: Brown's leadership, McCann's woes & Accies' mettle

Celtic captain Scott Brown was the outstanding performer in Sunday's Old Firm clash

BBC commentator Rob Maclean highlights a good weekend for some Premiership players and one to forget for another.

Scotland will miss Brown's leadership

On the eve of the first Scotland squad announcement of his second spell as manager, Alex McLeish was given a painful reminder of what he'll be missing.

The leadership qualities of Scott Brown have rarely been more apparent than in 10-man Celtic's 3-2 defeat of Rangers at Ibrox on Sunday, which finally called to a halt all that crazy talk about a title battle.

The second half was only 12 minutes old when the double treble chasers were reduced to 10 men, with the score at 2-2. Not for the first time, red-carded Jozo Simunovic let his team down badly.

Celtic substitute Odsonne Edouard scored a 69th-minute winner. I did suggest in last week's blog that the young Frenchman might be the man of the moment.

• McLeish calls up six new Scotland faces

But it was skipper Brown who delivered the game's outstanding performance. He glued his team together for the last 20 minutes as Rangers desperately tried to salvage something with their one-man advantage.

His international retirement leaves a big hole to fill.

Daunting fixtures for Dundee

Dundee manager Neil McCann faces four tough games, three of them away

If Dundee manager Neil McCann is looking for some light relief after a Dens drubbing dished out by St Johnstone on Saturday and the touchline fracas which followed, it won't come from a quick glance at the fixture list.

His team crumbled in the Tayside derby, losing 4-0 at home to their Perth rivals whose gaffer Tommy Wright's air-punching celebrations were in sharp contrast to the after-match snarling of McCann.

He was entitled to be angry about the capitulation of his team, who've now lost five of their last six matches and are only three points better off than second bottom Partick Thistle.

• Saints & Dundee benches clash at full time

The gloom for the Dark Blues might not be lifted in the next few weeks with four tough matches coming their way ahead of the split.

Their only home game is against Hearts. The other three are at Pittodrie, Celtic Park and Ibrox.

Accies show strength for survival fight

Hamilton swapped places with Dundee in the Premiership drop zone at the weekend as they demonstrated again how much they relish a relegation struggle.

For Accies, it's an annual event and their latest unlikely escape bid is giving plenty of cause for encouragement.

They lost Greg Docherty and Michael Devlin in the January transfer window and, for Saturday's derby day meeting with Motherwell, they were minus key players including Darian MacKinnon, Ali Crawford and Dougie Imrie.

Yet Hamilton never looked like losing and their comfortable 2-0 win made it six points out of six for only the second time this season.

Of course, even with a couple of games in hand on the teams around them, they're far from safe. But Accies are made of strong stuff and again have their sights set on survival.

Hartley's Bairns heading for safety

Paul Hartley's Falkirk side have lost only three of their fixtures in 2018

It looked for a while as if Falkirk might be sacking their second manager in a matter of months but Paul Hartley has guided the Bairns to a remarkable recovery.

Replacing Peter Houston, Hartley had a near three month wait for a win and even then, at the turn of the year, Falkirk were second bottom in the Championship, losing touch with the teams above them and seemingly heading for serious relegation trouble.

But they've lost only three league games in 2018 and are now considerably closer to the promotion playoff places than the relegation version.

Saturday's impressive 3-1 victory over Morton took them to within seven points of fourth placed Dundee United.

Another appearance in the Premiership playoffs is unlikely but Hartley and Falkirk will settle for safety at the end of a scary season.