Comfortable win yesterday for the Champions at Celtic Park, once gain we could and should have scored more goals, but we’ll take the four plus a clean sheet and move on. It is a worrying trend that we are getting so many injuries, especially hamstring injuries, the news that Ali Johnston and Callum Osmand need operations today is a real setback, so it must be looked at to see what needs to be changed, is it the actual playing pitch, or problems with our warm-up’s?? or something else, we need to find a solution ASAP.
Obviously with the injuries to our squad it limits our options in the team selection process, with Ali already out, and now joined by Marcelo, we are very weak in the full back position. I thought Jahmai Simpson-Pusey did well in his first start since his loan deal commenced, he looked very composed, and added an extra bit of height to our defence, which we always need with the way opposing teams play against us, there seems to be a lot more taller players in Scotland than there were in previous seasons, teams see that as a way of combatting our fast attacking football, with the emphasis on keeping the ball on the ground, it’s not a referee we need, but an air traffic controller.
And talking about referees, and I use the referee term loosely when I’m talking about Don Robertson, once again he pulled Celtic for almost every challenge, 75% possession, and we still get almost three times the amount of fouls against than Kilmarnock did. The foul given against Daizen Maeda was embarrassing for Robertson, and the way the Killie defender went down was even more embarrassing. I remember when Robertson and Walsh were tipped to be the new top officials in Scotland, both of them have been absolutely hopeless in recent season, is it natural regression? Or is it just bad officiating when they are officiating Celtic matches?
I’d like to see Martin O’Neill retained by Celtic in some capacity, not as the first team coach, but in some type of consultancy position, even if it was only until the end of the season, hopefully we will have a new Head Coach before our next game, and it’s more than likely he will not be Scottish, so I believe it would help to have Martin around for his vast experience. Martin has done well in three of his four games in charge in a couple of weeks. We have had three well deserved victories, and one bad night in Denmark, but make no mistake, Midtjylland are a very good team, which shows with their four games in the Europa League this season, we never want to get beat off any team, but sometimes you have to hold your hand up when a better team beats you,
Hopefully with the International break we can get some rest for the players who have been playing most games. International breaks are only breaks for teams who have no International players in their squads, Celtic will have a lot of our first team players away, and some doing a lot of travelling all over the world. We now have three difficult away games at St Mirren, Feyenoord, and Hibernian, I suppose the chance of any of our injured players being fit is very slim indeed, so we need to get the best out of what we have available, get ourselves to January with the League Cup in the trophy room, and still be in a strong position to win the League and Cup.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.
