Any danger Gordon should have bailed him out more by recognising the danger? I think he does enough by coming 8 yards off his line and he has no chance with how far short Ambrose leaves the header.
Not thrilled to see Diego on.
Fuck that. Ambrose again.
Is Brown meant to be on the post or what?
I donāt think so. I think heās covering against a near post flick on.
Griffiths should do more to make Fernandao go around him but really it boils down to Ambrose not attacking the ball.
Whatās Deila going to do here? Weāve gone out of it completely since conceding the second goal.
No obvious switch but we need to do something. If Armstrong is fit enough Iād bring him in for Johansen who is on a yellow and is our least threatening of the front 4. Commons might not have much more than 60 mins in him though.
Well done Brown.
Smashing effort from Forrest. Finally playing again.
Better from Celtic. Brownās getting a grip of a previously overrun midfield again. Great strike by Commons there.
The referee has some dodgy tattoos.
Any link Rocko?
Only in the door and after listening to the game on the radio I was arsed stopping somewhere to watch.
Blackett and Rogic for Tierney and Johansen. 2-2. "82.
Nice football there. Great pick out from Lustig.
Celtic are soft under Deila. Malmo, Aberdeen, Ajax, tonight. All ties/games where we were ahead but couldnāt see it through. Even lost a couple of them such was the complete lack of composure. Very disappointing in the end after a promising first half tonight.
Pity that. Game was there for the taking, just like the Ajax one. But we simply arenāt good enough at the back. Scoring 4 against Ajax and Fenerbahce is more than I expected from our attack from the first 2 games but we canāt keep conceding like that obviously.
The Ambrose mistakes are just so infuriating. The first one is obviously out of nothing, but itās so repetitive and itās always coming and this has been the way for years. He may be a nice chap but it makes absolutely no sense that we have persisted with him season after season after season. He is always found out. He played too often last season and heās playing far too often this season. We need to understand that you need at least 3 decent centre backs. Ambrose doesnāt fall into that category - he doesnāt even come close. If we want to be cheap, we could easily pick up a veteran or the likes of OāDea or someone who might not be good enough but would do a better job probably for less money. Itās a terrible indictment on our recruitment strategy that we donāt think we can upgrade on Ambrose, even if we canāt pay a transfer fee.
Anyway, good performance in the main. Did well to recover from the second half slump but pity we didnāt capitalise on it. Think we need to be better at figuring out how to stop games getting away from us. That sounds like a stupidly obvious thing to say but we saw how nervous and defensive they looked when we put them under pressure. Allow a team like that (or Malmo or Ajax or Qarabag or whoever) to settle and theyāll probably play us off the park. Itās not easy to keep a high tempo and itās not easy to keep the ball against good teams but Iād like to see us having a better option for digging ourselves out of a hole when weāre struggling. Having a player like Griffiths up front doesnāt help because of his style of play. Heās been excellent this season but we have to find a way of getting him running into space in the channels when we need an out ball because playing it long to his chest doesnāt work.
Plenty of positives though tonight: Tierney looks like a fairly good left back, Boyata was much more solid than he has been, Lustig was fine, Brown was immense, Bitton was quiet but decent, Forrest was really good, Commons was dangerous, Johansen was ok, Griffiths was fine.
Our signings in the Deila reign have been very uninspiring.
We must have signed around 20 players in that time and youād only say that Gordon and Denayer have been successes with the jury out on a lot more.
Bright spots for me tonight were Tierney and Forrest, Tierney looks like heās up to the task of playing at left back and Forrest was very lively. Decent performance overall but Ambrose cost us once again, there really has to be a time when Deila says enough is enough and just tell him to train by himself and that he can find a new club.
One thing that has really annoyed me about Deila is his insistence on a 4-2-3-1, we are so predictable and soft at the minute.
Iād like to see how a narrow Stokes Commons Griffiths trident will work with Commons playing in behind. The best football we played under Lennon was when we had two up front and Commons playing in behind. Deila just seems too stubborn and naive to change shape or at least throw a few curve balls now and again.
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I certainly think we need a Plan B and I think we need to find a formation that gets a partner for Griffiths sometimes. He has been far better than we expected him to be but that doesnāt make him the perfect striker and heās very one dimensional so needs different formations to suit him better when the game isnāt going his way.
Stokes seems finished at the club. I donāt know why heās been written off but thereās clearly some issue behind the scenes. I havenāt seen Ciftci show anything better certainly and Stokes is a better player when heās playing alongside a goalscorer - i.e. Griffiths or Hooper.
I donāt know how much of a role Deila has in recruitment. Iāve said it before but we struck gold with a few players recently and we seem to let that cloud the fact that we have too many mistakes in the market and if weāre going for high risk strategies then we need to buy more lottery tickets. So pick up a couple of young centre backs from Croatia or Serbia or wherever and see how they develop. It wouldnāt cost much but it increases our chances of getting good players through to help the first team. We get precious little traffic through from the youths (though Tierney and Forrest were good exceptions to that tonight) and taking a Blackett on loan from United is just a stupid waste of money. It achieves nothing.
Where Deila does deserve credit is in transforming the performances of fringe players. Rogic and Bitton have matured into really good players, Griffiths was peripheral and is now a key player, Lustig had come good under Lennon but heās even more of a leader now (when heās fit). Gordon and Boyata were the only players who started tonight that have been signed in the past 2 seasons. Considering weāve lost Van Dijk, Forster, Matthews and a few shit strikers from Lennonās time he hasnāt one badly because that wasnāt a brilliant squad he inherited. It needs to be improved though. Half our bench tonight wasnāt good enough, and one of our starting XI was nowhere near good enough. And that isnāt going to change soon.