Aiden and Naka not starting. Sheridan and McDonald up top.
I’m assuming Aiden is rested again.
Full team:
Boruc
Hinkel
Caldwell
McManus
Wilson
BRown
Hartley
Robson
Maloney
McDonald
Sheridan
SUBS:
McGeady
Nakamura
others
Interesting enough. You obviously need to match them physically as they’ll look to kick the shit out of us on their tight pitch and with a baying mob behind them. I hope we haven’t fully sacrificed our flair though as we will need to outplay them as well as match them for effort. The lads can obviously come off the bench but I wouldn’t want that to be when we’re already behind.
Don’t like the fact we’re not starting McGeady to be honest. He’s been in great form recently and this is one of our hardest fixtures so whatever about setting up suitably to match them physically we should also be setting ourselves up to capitalise on the fact we have superior footballers.
Big game for Sheridan now - hard to think a few weeks ago that he’d be leading the line for us from the start.
That’s what I was getting at in my last post too. I’d like him to play from the start as we need to create and score as well as battle. Looking forward to this now, especially seeing how Sheridan handles things.
turned it on bout 20 mins ago. maloney looking sharp. i thought he would be a good signing for the villa but it never really worked out for him. hearts are awful cack tho. is that nade who was at sheff utd a couple of years back? robson looks tidy in midfield.
I know Celtic have been complaining bitterly about the Famine song that the Rangers fans sing about. about ten mins ago during that ‘Graffiti on the wall’ song you could hear as clear as day ooh ahh up the ra. Might be seen as a bit hypocritical by some
That’s an excellent first half from Celtic. The whole team has played well - great appetite for the battle, Robson in particular has made some amount of challenges and hasn’t lost a single tackle.
We’ve played them off the park and fought them off the park. Caldwell and McManus putting in some great blocks and interventions at the back. Throughly impressed.
Super goal from Maloney too. Quality strike.
[quote=“KIB man”]turned it on bout 20 mins ago. maloney looking sharp. i thought he would be a good signing for the villa but it never really worked out for him. hearts are awful cack tho. is that nade who was at sheff utd a couple of years back? robson looks tidy in midfield.
I know Celtic have been complaining bitterly about the Famine song that the Rangers fans sing about. about ten mins ago during that ‘Graffiti on the wall’ song you could hear as clear as day ooh ahh up the ra. Might be seen as a bit hypocritical by some[/quote]
Maloney’s having a good game alright. It’s not a great Hearts team to be fair but they need to be beaten and it’s not always an easy place to go and win. Not sure about that Nade lad.
Some might see the Graffiti on the wall thing as hypocritical - I don’t. First of all it’s political singing but I don’t consider it sectarian or racist, whereas the Famine Song is certainly explicitly intolerant of Irish people. Also it’s usally sung as Ooh aah Samaras these days. Largely irrelevant that but just pointing it out.
id see no problem with the song either rock. its probably one of my favourite rebel songs but it was def interspersed with the ooh aah up the ra chants. sure samaras aint even playing. nade just gone off. not sure what to make of the cavan lad. a bit raw but good to see him getting a chance anyway.
It’s sort of irrelevant but the Ooh Aah Samaras bit has gained popularity and it’s a reason for the resurgence of the song. Not my fsvourite but that’s just personal. Good rendition of Aidan McAnespie at the start of the second half and that’s my favourite to be honest.
Sheridan was mixed alright. He’s played precious little reserve football even due to injuries and has really only had a handful of games at senior level either in the first team or in the reserves. There’s plenty of work to be done but there’s a bit of promise there in that he has many of the attributes you’d want in a striker. Encouragingly he’s reasonably quick. When Samaras and Vennegoor of Hesselink come back from injuries he’ll be back in the reserves but if he can stay fit for most of the rest of the season he’ll really benefit from that run of games in the reserves.
Poor enough second half today - game was dead. Terrible penalty from Hartley but it was obvious even at that stage that it wouldn’t matter.
Great 2nd goal. You have to hand it to Caldwell for scoring that one.
Saw the first half of this only but that’s where the key moments took place. I thought Celtic were excellent for the first half hour in every single aspect of the game. We bossed them completely and the passing, movement, commitment and everything else was spot on. The personal battles and tackles were being won as well and the amount of blocks and strong and fair challenges reflected a team playing with a great attitude. We got a bit careless coming up to half time and weren’t retaining possession as well as earlier but they didn’t really threaten all the same.
As Rocko says, Sheridan’s raw but has good attributes. He needs games and experience and hopefully he’ll get an injury free run now, which should bring him on hugely. With more experience, he should get better at timing his runs, improve his hold-up play and get better at releasing the ball to support players. I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen though.
Sounded like a quality atmosphere today too and Tynecastle’s always a place that brings the best out of the Celtic support. They were well up for it and there was some cracking renditions of Aidan McAnespie, Boys of the Old Brigade, Celtic Symphony and others. They don’t like being dismissed as the weee/mini/diet Huns at all and were properly wound up by ‘Oh, the wee Huns are shite’ and ‘Can you hear the wee Huns sing?’ too. Seemed like tremendous fun.
Manchester United won’t be able to live with us if we play the way we did for the first 30 minutes again on Wednesday night.