I think Bayo deserves more opportunities, I donât think he has looked that bad in the chances he has been given and needs a bit of game time and sharpness for us to properly judge him.
5 of Celticâs next 7 league fixtures are away from home and this includes a plastic pitch and a beach. Thereâs not really any margin for error after todayâs result. I take my hat off to our great rivals and friends Rangers - I thought the League Cup Final loss, and especially the manner of it, would sting and have lasting effects. But they qualified from their Europa League group and won all league games played since, including away games at Motherwell, Hibs and Celtic.
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If that cunt Frimfrong ever plays for Celtic agau4
Youâre a true sportsman. Youâve displayed a magnanimity in defeat which has been sadly lacking in a lot of the other Glasgow Celtic supporters here.
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Brendan Rodgers saw this coming and fucked off like the coward he is.
Ye need a midfielder. Or two. Brown is done. Not good enough to play v rangers and the other two were worse. They ran through Celtics midfield all day. It was none existent.
McGregor looks burned out.
@Rocko, @Big_Dan_Campbell, @briantinnion et al, could one of you post the Celtic chap from The Athleticâs article on the defeat yesterday please?
Celtic were outplayed by Rangers across all 180 minutes of their two December fixtures.
While luck, refereeing decisions and a career-peak showing by Fraser Forster allowed Celtic to snatch victory in the League Cup final three weeks ago, the scoreline on Sunday was a much fairer reflection of the gameâs dynamic.
Going into the final league game before the winter break, it was widely believed that Celtic couldnât be as poor as they had been in the cup final. Surely, with a better-balanced starting XI and more streetwise to Rangersâ tactics, theyâd improve. They didnât.
Hereâs where and how Celtic underperformed in both games.
Striker as an out-ball
Arguably the biggest issue Celtic endured during the League Cup final was addressed at half-time: the lack of a recognised striker. Given desperately underwhelming performances from their wingers and midfield prevented more considered build-up play, Celtic were limited to either aimless punts upfield or high balls towards the 5ft 8in winger shoehorned as a false nine, Lewis Morgan. He was grappling with the 6ft 2in Connor Goldson and 6ft 3in Filip Helander.
The below was the result of a Celtic free-kick taken by Fraser Forster, with the ball circled in red. Goldson straightforwardly won the ball ahead of Morgan and Rangers mounted an attack. This happened repeatedly in the first half.
Odsonne Edouard arrived at the start of the second half and even at only partial fitness immediately offered a more sophisticated outlet, using his strength and astuteness to win a free kick within minutes of entering the field, from which Celtic scored the only goal of the game. His hold-up play and impeccable timing of decisions then came to the forefront later after shrugging off Goldson and feeding in Mikey Johnston, who fluffed the one-on-one.
Celtic approached Sunday knowing how critical Edouardâs use as an out-ball, and his intelligence in possession, would be. His goal on Sunday was obviously fortunate but the attack arose through his physicality and close-knit dribbling, leading to the ricochets which found Callum McGregor in space for his shot on goal.
Itâs difficult to discern whether he had an overall poor game by his standards given the complete lack of support and quality from Johnston, Christie and Forrest behind him but there were a few uncharacteristic hesitancies to his game. Still, his presence as an out-ball improved the attacking strategies from the cup final. It was the other areas of the pitch where Celtic capitulated.
Defending the left flank and left half-space
Perhaps the second most glaring issue for Celtic from the cup final was the amount of space found â and opportunities created â down Celticâs left flank and in the left half-space. Throughout, there were gaps in these areas and a handful of unforced errors in possession from Jonny Hayes and Kris Ajer, from which both Joe Aribo and Alfredo Morelos profited.
The problems began immediately, as illustrated below. Within the opening two minutes, a lack of coordination on the left was exploited. Both Hayes and Ajer got sucked towards Morelos, whose headed flick-on found an unmarked Aribo charging down the channel. He was eventually fouled in a dangerous position. It was a small error that had become symptomatic of the first half.
The dynamic became more pronounced as the half wore on. At one stage, Scott Arfield picked up the ball unpressured inside Celticâs half just as Aribo was breaking into the gap between Ajer and Hayes. His eventual threaded pass was poor and ran out for a goal kick but the space vacated by Celtic was galling.
Both Hayes and Ajer improved after the break but the heart of the issue persisted.
On Sunday, with a natural left-back in Boli Bolingoli, the proposition was hoped to have changed with him more comfortable in occupying the flank and the inside channel, yet he was positionally suspect. Within the opening 10 minutes, he was easily tackled by Aribo when a simple pass down the line to Johnston was on, from which Christopher Jullien did well to recover and put Aribo off his attempted cross.
Furthermore, he looked physically off the pace. There was one incident in the first half â where James Tavernier drilled a pass down the line for Bolingoli to stab for a throw-in when he could have controlled it â which underlined his sluggishness.
Bolingoli wasnât alone in losing control of the flanks, however.
Use of attacking width
Compounding the problems caused by Hayesâs unnatural positioning in the cup final, as a winger by trade, was the timidity of the man in front of him. Moi Elyounoussi was a shadow of the player that had excelled in the Europa League: hesitant and ineffective, and as became clear in the hours and days after the final, completely unfit and unprepared to play any football, never mind a cup final derby. With hindsight, Celticâs left flank had been cobbled together with duct tape.
That James Forrest underperformed on the right wing and Jeremie Frimpongâs offensive opportunities corralled before his sending off, meant that arguably Celticâs greatest strength â their penetration and pace from wide â was annulled.
Sunday seemingly addressed this. With Frimpong, the returning Bolingoli, Johnston and Forrest, it was the first time Celtic started with four players in their natural wide positions since the League Cup semi-final against Hibs at the start of November.
Yet Forrest put in one of the worst games of his Celtic career, often receding inside the pitch, leaving Frimpong double-marked and consequently impotent. The right-hand flank was a no-go.
On the left, despite their natural width, Bolingoli and Johnston also frustrated. Johnston made the wrong decision on the ball frequently, missing two simple opportunities in the first half to play in Edouard after breaking through midfield, and didnât offer enough covering his full-back, whose rare forays forward were themselves inconsequential.
If anything, the wide players were even poorer than at Hampden.
Battle in the middle
The final area where Celtic struggled was in the simple, old-fashioned and utterly crucial dynamic of the midfield battle. Inversing what had happened in the first derby in September â when Ryan Christie, McGregor and Scott Brown had dictated most of the play in the middle â Glen Kamara, Ryan Jack and Arfield had dominated at Hampden, winning almost all the 50-50s and breaking lines with crisper passing than their counterparts.
On Sunday, the Hampden dynamic persisted, with Celtic using the same players in the same set-up, and Steven Davis replacing Arfield in the starting XI, but Rangers still controlled the midfield. Even without pressing intensely, they were authoritative, with well-angled passing triangles and close movement around each other to constantly provide a passing option; whereas Celticâs three of McGregor, Christie and Brown were scrambling and unfocused.
Rangers broke Celticâs lines far too easily, with the home sideâs press uncoordinated and riddled with gaps. Once they had broken through, they found yards of space to manoeuvre before reaching the back line. This was captured in Rangersâ opener, where they gained the ball off a heavily-manned Celtic attack and countered with simple passing through the centre of the pitch before finding Morelos, who spread it out wide before the goalâs build-up. It was astoundingly straightforward, calmly executed, and woefully defended.
When Olivier Ntcham and Nir Bitton came on in the second half, heralding Celticâs change to a back three, Celtic exerted themselves better in the middle but this was also down to Rangers sitting slightly deeper to protect their 2-1 lead. It came too little, too late anyway.
The absence of system
This was as equally prominent in the cup final as at Celtic Park â but the latter fixture dramatically rubber-stamped it as a critical problem for the rest of the season.
Rangers had a clear tactical game plan: to congest the middle, overlap the full-backs, and use Morelos as a harrying prop to advance the ball upfield. Celtic knew this because thatâs how Rangers set up in the cup final. But they didnât adapt.
Rangers also won because they were more aggressive off the ball and more measured on it, with their best individual players driven and confident. More pointedly, they were well-drilled and well-organised. They knew their roles and understood their patterns; when and where to press or cover space, and when and where to show for the ball or stay put.
Celtic didnât really know their roles, didnât really exhibit patterns, and they didnât play with a visible system beyond a rudimentary formation. Their play was instinctive and uncoordinated. They were collectively unsure and individually timid; there were too many incidents of Brown giving away possession, Johnston driving head-down into traffic, Christie running aimlessly, and Forrest deciding against a run to the byline.
Itâs not a problem of personnel. With the exception of Elyounoussi and possibly Hatem Elhamed, Sundayâs starting XI was probably Celticâs strongest. Throughout the team, to a man, these are individually very good players. But things arenât clicking as a team. There was little understanding in playing through the press, even less coherence in building play and creating chances, and no inspiration or genius to sculpt goals from nothing. They were the clear opposite of Rangers; poorly drilled and poorly organised.
That Celtic didnât learn from the cup final, that they persisted with the same plan for the midfield battle especially, is concerning. Perhaps even more concerning is how complacently Celtic have handled the second half of other games this month: against Hamilton, Aberdeen, Hibs and St Mirren, Celtic reached a comfortable point of the game before inexplicably losing control. Celtic were playing on instinct rather than strategy, growing complacent, and conceding chances. Again, like Sunday, there was no developed system in these games.
There are only so many times you can ride your luck and rely on the inspiration of an Edouard or Christie (and Forster) in a 60-game season. You need a cohesive system to complement individual ingenuity, and Celtic havenât really evidenced one since Novemberâs win away to Lazio. Celticâs listlessness in both games was self-inflicted.
A style as inherently risky as Lennonball was going to come unstuck eventually, and it has done so spectacularly. It needs to be repaired, adjusted, and built upon for Celtic to recover.
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Thanks Bob.
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took the words right out of my mouth
Itâs a curious article, mostly writing about the cup final. And I donât think itâs reasonable to think all those matches were won without a coherent system and that one loss (and two poor performances) illustrate that more than all the victories.
The system didnât work but I donât agree there wasnât one. Our wingers were very poor and or full backs werenât much better and effectively allowed their full backs to do whatever they wanted and their wide players to overload our midfield. We should have been able to drag their midfielders wide and isolate Davis against Christie and Edouard dropping off but we only managed that occasionally.
He got a big step up in fairness
Imagine if they heard an Irish accent in there 
I see the Huns are accusing Celtic fans of racist comments towards that little Rat bastard.
Due process has to take its course now. If Morelos was racially abused, hopefully the racists are weeded out and have the book thrown at them. The likes of @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy will probably be rushing to judgement already and washing his hands on supporting Glasgow Celtic as his team in Scotland.
The Huns defending the slit throat gesture
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Correct.
The media havenât been so quick to highlight it which was done twice on live Coverage.
Donât hear too much about their Coach being Red Carded either.
Sweep sweep