Hoping this thread won’t be needed later but bringing it up to date for the one goal I hadn’t covered yet.
Celtic 0 St Johnstone 1 (21 August 2011)
Only one goal conceded - a Mackay shot that deflected past Forster off Joe Ledley. It was a real team effort for sharing the blame with a half dozen players all playing minor roles.
Majstorovic: 5%… A fairly straightforward ball down the channel to allow (the unathletic) Cillian Sheridan to chase had Majstorovic backpedalling a little and he nodded out to concede a throw-in. Far from the worst piece of defending ever but Sheridan hadn’t given much chase and every long ball forward can’t result in winning a throw in Celtic’s half. Had a little battle with Sheridan later on in the scramble just before the game but no fault there.
Matthews: 20%… Lost out to Sandaza twice for the goal. First of all he was outmuscled by Sandaza when the ball was thrown inside. Sandaza tried to turn into Matthews but the Celtic defender was blocking his path and the ball came loose. Sandaza was appreciably stronge in the ensuing tussle and easily fought off the attentions of Matthews to lay the ball off to Morris inside. He was doing the right think and was reasonably tenacious so it wasn’t very poor defending, but he needs to get stronger.
Later the ball is returned (off camera) to Matthews and Sandaza again and this time Matthews contests aerially and makes a mess of his jump. He gets the timing all wrong and though he outjumps his man he connects with nothing and succeeds only in landing awkwardly which takes him out of the game for the rest of this passage of play. Again it was good enthusiasm and his positioning was fine and alert, but he was let down by execution.
Ki: 5%… Ball watching when Matthews was struggling with Sandaza. He was marking Morris from the original throw-in (first picture below) but allowed him to wander off behind his back and when Sandaza won the ball back he was able to feed Morris who now had 10 metres to advance into unopposed. (second picture below) Ledley came out well to try and make the block to cover Ki’s shortcomings.
Forster: 5%… Morris hits a decent shot from 25 yards but it’s fairly straight and Forster looked uncomfortable with it. He parried it back into a dangerous area but was rescued from this error by Mark Wilson’s clearance. It was poor goalkeeping but its impact on the eventual goal was peripheral.
M Wilson: 15%… Reacts well to the initial parry from Forster.
After Matthews loses out to Sandaza for the second time the ball is worked to Liam Craig overlapping (via Sheridan) and he puts in a very decent cross. It arrives to Mark Wilson and Murray Davidson in the middle and the Celtic left back is in a good position. He is probably fouled by Murray Davidson but he neither makes the header nor goes to ground and the result is a ball bouncing in the Celtic area where MacKay was lurking.
Ledley: 15%… Like Mark Wilson he had done reasonably well earlier when he was the only player bothered to close down the shot from Morris and he had the defensive awareness and discipline to get back and cover in the box afterwards even though Celtic had reasonable numbers in the centre. When the shot came in from MacKay he should have been stronger though. He half-turned on it to protect himself and if he’d stayed facing it would have found it tame enough to block easily.
Commons: 35%… Fine starting position against MacKay and remains goalside throughout the initial move until Wilson clears long. He then advances ahead of MacKay hoping for a break which is no harm and the sort of early movement that is vital on the counter. It soon becomes apparent that the ball will be returned again to the Celtic box and this time Commons shows no interest despite having all the time he needs to get goalside of MacKay (first picture below). Instead he simply ignores this threat and gambles on not being required. A gamble that ended up costing a goal (and a resultant defeat). (Second picture below)