thecelticblog struggles to find anything positive to sat about a defeat that hurts like getting a melon shoved up your bum. not that we have ever had a melon shoved up our bums, well, I haven’t but I can’t talk for any of the others….
If you had read the cup final preview then you will probably have noticed that I called most of The Bad right.
What 5 things sprung to mind after the defeat? Read on and find out.
1) My loathing of the Skol/Dryburgh/Coca-Cola/CIS/Diddy Cup is today at an all time high. This hatred was born in the early 80’s when I remember McMoist scoring a hat-rick against and continued with Butcher diving for a pen and David Hay wanting to take his players off, Raith fecking Rovers, numerous early round defeats to Airdrie, Falkirk and other delightful provincial clubs. 14 wins and 14 defeats in finals. It’s a competition of abject misery and yesterdays team only followed previous and reverted to type.
Next season I want us to treat it with the contempt it deserves. We should sign 11 Costa Rican midgets, who are blind in one eye, have club feet and are riddled with rickets and play them. Mind you, they would probably still get to the final…..(and lose).
2) I’ve seen debts to Littlewoods catalogues go down quicker than our goalie, we had a defence that couldn’t handle that dark art, one so complicated only a few can master, of a long ball to a physical centre forward who is smart (that is being kind), a midfield that won so many second prizes that it should have been called Bruno and a strike force that contained one off form the other who has got a contract and a pay rise and looked like he couldn’t be ar$ed.
The big question has to be how did it take them to extra time to beat us? Oh, aye…..
3) Lennon has been pro-active with his substitutions in these games recently. Yesterday saw reactive substitutions not pro-active ones and this seriously hampered what we could do to inspire a malfunctioning unit. Rogne was taken off for the good of his health, Brown was injured (but was a passenger anyway)and it’s against the rules to sub 8 of your players.
4) Jelavic has been upgraded from custard knees to jelly and ice cream knees. He owned our backline yesterday, but get’s in at number 4 as that is the number of times he has been booked for diving this season. If he was Lithuanian he would be getting hounded out the country.  I can safely call him a diving c*nt though.
5) There will be no need for a summit after this game. The two reasons that why there was no on-field trouble were R*ngers won and  Spit The Dog played virtually no part. Maybe Alec and Co need to suggest that this happens all the time…..
agree about the subs inactivity… change was needed when we’d still a chance (amazingly as bad as we were).
we could all see that it was ‘one of those days’ with sammy reverting to type i.e a gormless lanky … etc etc’2nd touch a sliding tackle anyone?
stokes the bar man’s comments true or no, stokes jnr should be fkn angry not getting on the pitch when it was so inept and crying out for change.
mistake from lenny there i think.
Subs, were a victim of circumstance more than anything. The Derry Pele was a waste of a sub. Unsure if Stokes would have made a difference. We were rank.
plus weiss gave them impetus, thems the breaks.
I don’t think Samaras couldn’t be arsed, I just think he suffered from running down blind alleys disease. I do wish he’d pick his head up sometimes and see the guy on the wing screaming for a pass. He did that so many times yesterday. I watched the game with an English mate and he commented on how ball greedy he is. Frustrating !
Frustrating was not the word I used frequently yesterday.
Aye, me neither !
Samaras was still the only Celtic player who looked like he may do something
much better than the seldom seen Hooper on the day
I thought Sammy looked ‘up’ for it in the first 10. He then reverted to that all to familiar empty vessel.
I’m sorry but Sammi was one of Celtic’s better players. I don’t get this Samaras hate, he was far superior and more influential than Hooper.
He was superior in the fact that he made himself known, contrary to most of the team. However, his general play was selfish, had no direction and, for most of the game, he ran blindly with his head down, ignoring the majority of players who were screaming for a pass as a better option. Why we gave him a new contract, as a one game specialist, is beyond me. Romantic notions of him being able to get the better of Rangers are not sufficient justification in my book. He will continue to frustrate. Hooper was poor, but the “resurgent” midfield were worse and didn’t help him. That’s also the reason the defence fell apart. A poor team performance, nobody worked for the cause. We’ll rebound.
This.
As I said in the previous post the most important factor for me was Lennon being in the stand. Trackside, he would have fired the team up. That and the fact that the teams are more closely matched than y’awl give Rangers credit for. Three tournaments, one to Rangers, the league on a knife edge but still statistically in Rangers favour and a cup that Celtic should win. No evidence there after so many games to point towards clear Celtic superiority, in fact……..
The gap wasn’t as wide as made out but a lot of Tims have gained a lot of confidence from how we have been playing. Fans are fickle and it’s either great or shit.
Bottom line is we are further down the road of recovery than we should be no matter the end of the season.
We were very poor and Lenny called it wrongly. He played a back four with a man who was never match fit in Rogne. The pitch was never going to help our style of play which he should have realised and went with a 4, 5 1 to give the weak defence some cover. To be honest Rangers posed very little threat other than long balls and endevour, which a decent side should nulify. Big Georgie given a new deal and he rewards us with a back to his best performance!!!!.
Not many pass marks if any at all and most thought they had just to turn out to win.
Hope we learn from this and go on ball busting run of wins to have a chance of the title.
I dont think Hooper was fit as he pulled out the England U21s this week. I wonder about Commons as well. Lennon still blows it on the big games, a fit team would have won that cup.
At least we get another crack at them, save the season and Lennons job maybe
The blowing it in big games has been proven to be a myth since Jan.