Well Saturday didn’t turn out the way a lot of people thought it would, it’s never a good sign when all the rag sports writers are tipping Celtic to trounce the opposition. I always said that if Celtic turned up and played to our capabilities we should win the game, unfortunately we didn’t. But I’m never comfortable when a top division team has gone a long time since winning a cup, the law of averages says they’re going to win one sometime, we also had Callum who had never played in a losing final, even at the Bhoy’s Club, same scenario. I remember putting £100 on Dundee Utd to beat the Old Rangers in the 1994 Final, I think United had played 4/5 finals without winning, so it was easy money for me.
I think we beat ourselves against Aberdeen, you knew exactly what system Thelin would play, a 5-3-1-1, very tight at the back, they would have five in midfield until we got into their half, then they would have five along the back. They kept it close until ten minutes to go, then threw three subs on to try to steal the game, and it worked. We certainly missed Reo Hatate and Jota, it’s even more annoying when the clown who got away with crocking Reo ended up with a cup winners medal while Reo is on crutches, that’s Scottish Referees for you. The reality is, we didn’t do enough to win the game, it’s alright having lot of possession, but it’s pointless when we don’t capitalise on it. Too many players had an off day, you can get away with maybe one or two in the category, but when it came to pick a man of the match for us, the choice would have been limited.
Although we didn’t hit the heights of earlier in the season, we were still better than Aberdeen. Aberdeen’s plan from the first minutes was to take it to penalties if they didn’t manage to nick a goal, and going by the way the officials treat Celtic, there was always a chance of that. I’ve said from day 1 that Brendan Rodgers is an elite manager, and I always believed he was a reactionary manager, but he seems to be stuck in this rigid system of 4-3-3. Aberdeen (and other teams) are happy to let us have the ball in our own half, playing along the back four, our central defenders get more kicks than our forward players. We had 82% possession and 24 shots at goal, but only 3 on target, nobody shoots from outside the box now, what would we do now for a Bobby Murdoch or Big Tam Gemmell. We had 15 corners, and managed to scrape a goal from one, we must get 1,000 corners a season, and are lucky if we score 5 goals from them.
That’s the first Scottish Cup Final we’ve lost since 2002, and since then we have won it eleven times, including four in a row between 2017-20, but it’s still maddening when you know we are miles ahead of Aberdeen, our reserve team beat them 5-1 at their own midden a couple of weeks back, maybe we should have started with that line-up, especially with Big Maik Nawrocki in the team. Then to watch Shinnie going around celebrating at time-up, a guy who was anonymous during the game, the only reason he got a mention was for getting Big Cameron booked by the idiot Robertson for winning the ball in a fair tackle. Was it a case of the team running out of energy? If it was, it shouldn’t be, the opportunity to win a sixth treble in nine years should have been enough incentive to win. Or was it God’s way of telling Brendan Rodgers that he’ll never be better than Big Jock Stein.
It’s over with now, and it can’t always be Celtic that wins, what we need to do is learn from it, we need to improve the squad in the summer, I honestly don’t know who is in charge of recruitment at Celtic Park, but when we spend massive sums of money we need to get more right than wrong. Again I’m not casting aspersions, but it was worrying when we substituted four players on Saturday who between them cost about £30m, we cannot afford that every season, it was Arne Engels first season, and I definitely think he will be a very good player for us, but you would have to say if on the pitch at the time, him and Idah would have been on penalties, and again without tossing blame about, we would have expected Kasper to deal with the cross ball that led to their goal, as I said already, we need to suck it up and move on now.
The job of the Club now is to strengthen for next season, we need to bring in quality players that can hit the ground running, there is certainly a place for project players, we have done very well out of some in the past, like Virgil, Victor, and more recently Jota and Matt O’Riley, but our main objective is the domestic League and Cup’s, we came close to the treble, but should have won it. If Adam Idah isn’t going to be our No 1 striker, then we need to find someone who is, Celtic have been renown throughout the years for our centre forward’s, you can go back as far as Jimmy Mc Grory, or Stevie Chalmers or Dixie Deans, one of my favourites was Gary Hooper, and then the King of Kings Henrik. Maybe I’m being a bit unfair to Big Adam, given the way we play sometimes, he hardly touches the ball. It’s got to be as the song say’s “To play football the Glasgow Celtic way” and that is fast attacking football, let’s get back to that.
Glasgow’s still Green & White.
