Yesterday afternoon at Snake Mountain was an embarrassment to the Celtic Support, and that goes double for the Celtic Players and Management Team. That was as bad as I’ve seen us play for many years, and after the embarrassment of losing to Lask in the Champions League qualifier, that was the last thing we needed so early in the season. Make no mistake about it, the fault for that defeat lies firmly within Celtic Park, no excuse for that defeat to a bang average Sevco side, and a defensive minded manager. We are seriously lacking a “Bully” in midfield, we desperately need a Scott Brown, Victor Wanyama, or a Roy Aitken, every team we play has one, we cannot continue to believe we can win games by simply playing good football, and having said that, we could be doing with a Bobo Balde as well.
I have been saying for years now that we are being outmanned in midfield, every team we play goes with at least four midfield players, while we continue to go with three, players who have looked really good in recent weeks, like Mika Baur, were anonymous yesterday. Mc Innes actually went with three at the back, the very same system that Martin played during his first spell at Celtic Park, and a system I thought he would have went with, allowing Colby Donovan to go into midfield, instead we actually isolated young Colby, which was clear at the first goal. On the left side, Seb Tounekti couldn’t beat me, and I’m 75 years old, he doesn’t want to use his left foot and thus keeps turning back onto his right foot, if I was going to use Camilo and Seb as wide players I certainly would have played them on the opposite side.
Because of the system we are playing Kasper Hogh is getting starved of service, the big man must be livid, we saw it at Perth on Wednesday night as well, if we had gone with Haissem on the right, he will try to get crosses in, or turn inside for a shot, I didn’t understand the decision to leave him out, in fact, at the moment, James Forrest is probably the best right winger at the club. One thing we did achieve, was to concur with another “Stupid Instruction” from Police Scotland, telling the Celtic Players not to celebrate scoring a goal, we never had the occasion to celebrate, although in the first half we had two or three decent opportunities to score.
Oldco have now tried everything possible to keep the Celtic Supporters out of Snake Mountain, they have reduced the Celtic ticket allocation from around 8,000 to zero, all because they couldn’t take any more of seeing the Celtic Supporters celebrating, well it worked for them yesterday, but that was because the SPFL and Premier Sports refused to play their part and instruct them to accept a minimum of 5% ticket allocation for the visiting team, let’s be honest here, if they had been playing anyone other than Celtic, that team would have received a 5% ticket allocation. Their “Great Scheme” was to offer Celtic 300 tickets, in the deranged thinking that Celtic would accept them, and agree to give them the same for the match this Sunday, they planned to give the 300 tickets to the “Onion Bears” yes the same Onion Bears that caused havoc the last time we played over in Govan, as the old saying goes “The loonies have taken over the Madhouse” since the yanks took over nothing has changed, the Onion Bears are allowed to conduct themselves in whichever manner they want, and do so with impunity, it’s the same circus, just different clowns.
One thing is certain this week at Celtic Park, the Celtic Management and Players owe us the supporters two big displays against Ferencvaros and Sevco, we cannot endure another ninety minutes like yesterday, that kind of display is not acceptable from any group of players representing Celtic Football Club. We also have the downside of the Mob being out of Europe, they will have a free week to prepare for Sunday, that’s why we have a big squad. I suspect we will see changes on Thursday night, the manager has already stated he will prioritise winning the League over Europe, and I definitely agree with that, but we have to find a way of winning both at home and in Europe.
Glasgow’s still Green and White.