It was an absolute pleasure to be at Celtic Park yesterday afternoon to see the Champions dismantle the “Diet Ones from the East” It’s been a long time since we heard the music from the “Magnificent Seven” at Celtic Park, we used to hear it almost every week when Henke was banging the goals in for fun. It was a pretty even match in terms of possession, but we managed to score seven from ten shots on target. Another stat which bamboozles me is, we had double the amount of fouls given against us by David Dickenson, which resulted in three yellow cards for Celtic against one for the Jam Tarts, it’s funny how we are the team doing most of the attacking, but always seem to get the most fouls given against us.
It was a really good display from Celtic, there were no failures in the team, and I was really glad to see young Callum Osmand starting the game, I thought the Bhoy was outstanding in the first half, hopefully there are no injury worries with him. We were talking amongst ourselves late in the game, trying to pick a Man of the Match, it was a pretty hard decision to make, there were a few contenders, as I said already, everyone played their part, I was impressed once again with young Colby Donovan, Colby has just turned twenty, and he has a real chance of having a very good career at Celtic, he has probably played more games than he would have expected at his age, mostly down to the injury to Ali Johnston. I also thought Kieran had a very good game, if he can produce displays like that consistently, and with Ali or Colby on the other side we are well off at fully back.
It’s obviously a bonus when we score goals throughout the team, with three goals shared along the middle and three along the front, added to Kieran’s header. Benji Nygren is just a natural finisher, as is Camilo Duran, and young Callum Osmand. We have to continue to play with speed and move the ball quicker from back to front, that’s the Celtic way of playing, it’s when we start passing it backwards, and across the backline that we struggle. I’m hoping that Big Kasper gets his goal touch back pretty soon, we will need everyone to be on their game, Kasper has probably lost a bit of confidence lately, I suppose that happens with most strikers, maybe Martin will tweak his system to accommodate Kasper and Camilo playing together through the middle.
I thought the atmosphere was very good yesterday, I suppose scoring a couple of goals in the first ten minutes helps that, and an obvious dislike of the Jambo’s and their supporters, irrespective of any of that, the Celtic team thrives off the atmosphere created by our own supporters, and yesterday was a fine example of that. It might be that the performance gets us back on track for the next few games leading up to the next International break in November, I just don’t like the breaks for International’s, it’s all about the money for FIFA and UEFA, these organisations don’t care about the amount of games players have to play, and the amount of money it costs us, the supporters to go and watch the games, it’s all about money and their own prestige.
So it’s on to Thursday night and our game against Celta Vigo, then we are off to Edinburgh to visit the Hibees, I never like playing teams who are going through a bad spell, because I always think they will get a win soon, just hope they don’t get it against us. We then have Dundee Utd at Celtic Park before the end of October, followed by a difficult trip to Falkirk, then two home games versus Besiktas and Kilmarnock. So if we can continue with the form shown yesterday, we will have nothing to fear.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.