Strange atmosphere hanging over Celtic so far this season post Postecoglou. Club & support are less unified, Rodgers is treading so cautiously he’s almost cutting a downbeat figure, the transfer window was disappointing & we’re out of a cup already. But the other crowd have a load of problems to contend with themselves.
Celtic have also been hit with injuries to key players like Carter-Vickers & Hatate, lost a couple of first choice players in Starfelt & Jota & other main men have displayed below par form, e.g. McGregor. Additionally, there’s an element of players collectively trying to get to grips with some system changes. Ange’s inverted full back role maximised Greg Taylor’s limited talents but he’s a far lesser player in the traditional full back role. McGregor has been a bit isolated on & off the ball as the 6 (cc @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy) in Rodgers’ system without the full backs coming infield alongside him & with the new manager giving O’Riley & Turnbull licence to get beyond the striker.
So Celtic look weaker than last season & need plenty of work on the training ground in the weeks ahead to develop into a coherent side. That’s where Rodgers’ strengths lay but will tomorrow be too early? We’ll surely have Nat Phillip(p)s making his Celtic debut after Scales’ woeful effort last week. Not sure if any other new player will start (maybe Palma most likely) but a couple could feature from the bench. I’d be downhearted if the Celtic side contains a McGregor, O’Riley, Turnbull midfield. One thing Rodgers said when first reappointed was that he thought the side could do with an infusion of power/athleticism to complement good technical players. Turnbull is just too slow & one dimensional & I think that trio would get shoved around.
Beale has a template for Celtic, which involves hard running & high pressing, trying to force mistakes/turnovers in our own half when we have the ball & playing lots of direct balls forward & fighting for second balls when they’re in possession in their own half. It’s rudimentary & fairly ugly football but you need to match their physicality & not hand them anything soft to cling onto (like we did in the admittedly dead rubber at Ibrox in May). They’ll have a load of derby debutantes themselves & anything could happen in truth.
I’m hopeful we haven’t regressed as much as recent performances might suggest.
As much as we might miss Jota, I think the isolation of McGregor has been the biggest factor in our performances to date. He’s been more static than under Postecoglou. I thought Ange perhaps stuck too rigidly to having one holding midfielder and McGregor was nullified sometimes. And thought we would improve in that area under Rodgers but it’s been the exact opposite. He’s very easily marked at the moment and the other midfielders aren’t rotating into that holding role at all.
But I think last weekend’s draw was a bit odd in that we created enough good chances to win the game comfortably. I think it was an improved performance and I’m hoping we can step up again. The injuries haven’t helped but it should still be a better starting team than the Huns can put out. And I’d like to think we can anticipate their tactics and play our way around them.
I’d say the standard is at an all time low among the Old Firm. Turnbull has the athleticism of a slug.
Owners don’t care, you go out and get a lad like Podence who would thrill the fans. You go out and get big Rom for a year and nail the cunts to the floor, because of the good will that would bring and people would remember it forever. Rich people don’t know shit about football.
Rangers actually have the right idea, they just buy shit players.
Celtic will buy 3 useless cunts for 5million each.
Rangers buy whatever they can afford, and a bit more. A badly run club who will bend every rule or break it for on the pitch success because it’s mostly run by nasty fanboys who just want to beat the tattypickers. Celtic are a well run business, but appear to have a sclerotic nepotistic inner circle who seem content with buying a smorgasbord of lottery ticket players, leading to a fairly average players in more than one position.
I actually thought that the huns had our number latterly last season, as did most every decent European side. We were very good under ange, but predictably so. I think BR was not a cheap option, but a safe one , and I’d rather have seen someone else, but it’s DD’s club to do with as he will.
The slightly unsolvable conundrum remains though. Recruiting good players in their prime. The vast majority see thec SPL as a career backwater. The type of high level player we may have attracted in years past, will be likely offered Saudi gold, and would be very foolish not to take it.
Unfortunately, an excellent signing for the SPL is not at all the same as a good one for European football, and going all in to try and compete at Champions league level would be financially irresponsible probably, because it is simply not reliable.
In short, it’s frustrating, but they’re probably right. I don’t warm to lawell (I don’t even know why really),and I wish we would push the boat out for a few top class players, but that isn’t easy at all to do. Wages become a source of disharmony if you’re not very careful.
We were blessed with a once in a generation leg up to the cream of the j league, but are unlikely to be the only trawler in that pond henceforth.
As was mentioned by @Bandage earlier Moleinho has a template for these games which is kryptonite to the current Celtic teams weaknesses i.e lack of pace, aggression and a passing game that collapses at the first decent press. Sevco of course are dire as well but I fear the worst today. Celtic need to stand up to the insanity of the first 20 minutes, don’t give the hordes anything to get worked up about and most importantly don’t concede. That’s a lot to hope for. A win isn’t out of the question of course but I’d be ecstatic with a draw. In reality I’m hoping that it won’t be worse than the last game there at the end of last season.
The worst thing to ever happen Celtic was the huns going bust. All interest in the league was lost for those few years and it never came back. The old firm would have been a packed out pub in the 00s. Be fuck all watching it today.
It also allowed Celtic to coast for a few years and they dropped miles off European standards and I don’t know will they ever get back.
In one sense, you don’t want to change approach just because it’s away to them. Like Ange in that dead rubber game at the tail end of last season still had Kobayashi & Bernabei trying to build out from the back with disastrous consequences. He was committed to his way & that way alone. And I’m not advocating tactics from that game under Lennon when Edouard drove the opening kick off out for a throw in down at the corner, rubby football style, & beckoned his team mates to push forward en masse to pin them in! But there should be a happy medium today (I hope).
If it is McGregor, O’Riley & Turnbull trying to knit passes together then I would fear Celtic getting dispossessed around halfway & the huns scoring in 2 v 2 run in towards goal. I’d like to think we’ve worked a bit on playing over their press & getting Maeda & Abada (or Palma & Yang) away down the flanks for example. We’ve no fans in the ground & every dispossession or tackle won will have the huns salivating. It would be sensible not to invite that all the time & get them turned around with a few more direct passes in behind.
I’d agree with that in truth. It’s why I’m less impressed with BR, and in particular Lennon 's records than others. A traffic cone would have won multiple titles with Rangers bankrupt. The 10 in a row would have been nice, but of no more value than the huns 9 in a row, which was garnered through cheating and fraud.
It was funny to watch, but Celtic just withered on the top of the vine. They’ve won big games at park head, as they should, but they became a tree to hide behind, as latterly,no more than sevco, we’ve been found out by lower tier European teams repeatedly. We are at the level over two legs of countries who in the past we’d have expected to beat. It’s not just sevco though. The whole SPL has become less competitive as the other sides by late winter have thrown the towel in.
It’s fair point but I don’t know the two things are linked.
Undoubtedly our performances in Europe have generally been dreadful. We have managed some good games and even a little consistency in Europe under Lennon when we retained our home form and were competitive away. But Rodgers, Ange and Lennon all lost far too many games against mediocre opposition.
And yet the Huns haven’t had that problem really. Sure they’ve had a few poor results but they managed to get to the Europa League final and have a great chance of winning it from the SPL, while not even being great domestically at the time.
The EPL has just eaten everything else alive for interest. Hopefully the bubble will burst soon. Very few watch Spanish football anymore. The derby today will be an afterthought for most people at best as you say. But I think all the money and players going to England has done that rather than the standard dropping. Plus the lack of away fans is shit.
We played far more balls over the top against Ross County and Aberdeen than in the subsequent games and it seemed to work quite well as a way of beating their press, though obviously the standard of player helped.
I think Kilmarnock and St Johnstone figured out that they just needed to press centrally around McGregor and the centre backs which meant they could still sit off our wingers and stop those longer passes in behind. I don’t think our midfield has been anywhere near mobile enough to allow us to play through our opponents properly. And our full backs have been appalling on the ball which has made it worse.
I’m putting a lot of faith in Johnston returning to give them more problems on the flank and open up space inside. But it’s still a problem if the passing there is going to be as slow and predictable as it has been.
