Champions League 2017/18 Matchday 5

[balbec]

Och aye

[Fagan_ODowd]

@Bandage

Rodgers won’t alter his approach to playing football and his teams will always look to build up and pass out from the back. I don’t have an issue with this but there’ll always be a risk against elite teams that they’ll intercept a ball or pounce on an error in your own half and punish you when you’re trying to play out. That happened for the first goal. The second goal was sheer class and that’s very difficult to stop.

But most, if not all, of the other goals should have been defended better. You can still look to be positive in possession while retaining a solid defensive shape. There’s no excuse for the two set piece concessions before half time. I hate using rugby football terminology re actual sports but they were both second phases after the initial corner or freekick and Celtic weren’t alive to it - runs not tracked and danger men not marked. There was complete indecision and a lack of leadership and organisation back there.

The clutch of goals in the second half consisted of two great finishes and then a fantastic long range strike but Brown and/or Boyata should have cleared the cross for the 5th and Tierney missed an attempted headed clearance for the 6th.

Celtic played some good football at various stages, especially in the first 20 minutes, but we shouldn’t be giving up so many goals and losing 12-1 to anyone over 2 games. We’ve taken a few European hidings now under Rodgers and he always talks in the aftermath about the lessons to be learnt and developing through experience. While we usually respond after each hammering (win in Brussels after first thumping by PSG, great display in defeat at home to Bayern after meek defeat in Germany), I’d prefer if the development didn’t necessarily have to be accompanied by hidings.

I think we need to sign a goalkeeper and a centre back. If we sign a good centre back in January then I think we could progress through a few rounds of the Europa League.

As an aside, I wonder if the results against PSG and Bayern Munich would make Rodgers waver. Does there come a point when he thinks “fuck this - we’re way too strong in our league but we’re cannon fodder for the top teams at this level.” Could that kind of purgatory make him walk sooner than we think or hope? He might be thinking that, irrespective of the financial disparity between the clubs, beatings like tonight won’t do his reputation any good when it comes to his next job after Celtic. Winning the Europa League would be a tremendous way to put this issue to bed though.

[Rocko]

I had a similar but more optimistic thought on Rodgers after the game which was that it’s no harm to keep his stock a little deflated so he stays at Celtic longer.

Very frustrating defensive performance though. I’m not sure the balance will be there to try and have players supporting our striker and also keeping a defensive shape. We didn’t really have anyone at right back, particularly after Lustig went off. He’s good at playing that dual role but it was exposed for the first goal by good movement from Cavani and Neymar and it’s not realistic to expect Lustig to cover such a wide area against that class of opposition.

It should be easier to coach a team to defend than to attack. The obvious difficulty is trying to be able to do both in the same game but in away games in Europe against elite clubs we need to be able to have a more defensive shape with full backs rigidly outside the centre backs and midfielders screening right in front of them.

They’d still have beaten us though.

[Bandage]

I agree on your point about the “fuck backs” in theory but that formation is meant to become a 5-4-1 without the ball with Forrest and Tierney flanking the three centre backs and the attacking midfielders filling in on the sides. I actually thought McGregor did the role very well on Dani Alves despite the last goal. We got destroyed by Neymar drifting in from the other side though.

In any case, 11tegen11 has the expected goals result as 2.38-0.33 so it was actually a grand display bar some silly defensive mistakes and PSG scoring with shots going in off the posts that wouldn’t ordinarily go in.