Last night I thought we lacked imagination until Scott Sinclair came on.
For the second game in a row I was reminded of our often desperate attempts to probe a packed defence from last season; we rushed passes, got frustrated, players took shots too wild to hit the net … it was a performance reminiscent of Ronny Deila’s Celtic.
That is, perhaps, to be expected. Save for a handful of players, Brendan is, of course, working with that side. He’s not yet had a chance to stamp his own indelible mark on it, save for a few very good signings. I keep on telling myself this is Phase One, and as far as it’s gone it’s gone well. Judge the development of this squad when it has developed.
That didn’t shake the deja-vu of course, nor the feeling that this was, in some way, a carry-over from the weekend and the draw at Inverness, a game where the same symptoms cropped up and gave us a more tense afternoon than many thought it ought to have been. I think last night would have been more comfortable but for that late Inverness equaliser … and I think the late Inverness game was so tense because it flowed from what happened in Spain.
In short, we’re suffering from a Barcelona hangover, the perhaps natural consequence of losing heavily in a European away tie. Momentum had been building nicely in the league, and coming off a 5-1 win against Sevco the players should have been buzzing and looking forward to every game. But the level of beating we took in the Camp Nou has shell-shocked some of these players, I think, and the nerves are obvious from the last two games.
We need to get over that and we need to do it quickly, and we need to do that whilst realising that further European mauling’s might still lie ahead of us. Players need to refocus and find their energy levels again; winning things in any season requires a certain mental toughness but this season is a bigger ask than most, because fans realistically expect that the treble can be delivered even as, all the while, we take on the best sides in Europe.
It’s not beyond these players, far from it. The skill and the experience is there.
They just need to be a little better at bouncing back when there are setbacks. We’ve already shown certain signs of mental maturity – for which we’ve been given no credit, by the way – in how we’ve coped with the Astana game and after we’d conceded a couple at home to Hapoel.
Brendan did say that working on skills came second to working on attitude and mentality; he realises there’s an issue here and that’s what he was focussed on when he arrived. I’d be very surprised if he’s still not looking at this as a key area where we can improve.
On to the game itself, and there’s not really a lot to say. Let’s cut through the hysteria about Craig Gordon; first, it was right to play him and secondly, having watched the incident a couple of times, his challenge was rash and reckless but a booking was probably the correct punishment. A lot of folk have forgotten that football is a physical sport, a contact sport, and like to see the red card flashed all the time. This was stupid from Gordon, not malicious.
James Forrest didn’t have a great game, but the kid did what I’ve come to respect him for … he kept on working, kept on looking for the ball, kept on waiting for the chance. When it came he took it with aplomb; it was an excellent finish and he deserved it.
It was also good to see big Moussa getting one.
But I thought two kids stood out, ironic as I’d suggested before the game (and then had to edit in a big hurry when I published the piece just as the team was announced haha) that we should play a team full of them. Kieran Tierney was superb, as ever, and was unlucky not to score, and I thought Ryan Christie showed real quality when he came on.
I’m very comfortable with where we are as a club right now, but you do get the feeling momentum was kind of spiked by what happened in Spain. The late goals last night – as opposed to the late one at the weekend – might be just what’s needed to spur us on.
Another big week lies just ahead.
In Brendan We Trust.