Celtic’s stutter to the league title continued with 1-1 draw at St. Mirren, in a game defined by two things: the very poor performance of referee Bobby Madden and yet another poor SPL performance from Celtic.
The game started perfectly for Celtic, as a fine Kris Commons header from an Ambrose cross gave us the lead in the 6th minute. Sadly Commons was later carried off with an ankle injury. From that point on the game went into a stalemate, with nothing much happening until Madden correctly disallowed a St. Mirren ‘goal’ for a foul on Fraser Forster, but just before half-time he made his first real error when should have awarded St. Mirren a penalty for a handball by Samaras.
The second half meandered along the same as the first until Madden once again took centre-stage, giving Victor Wanyama a straight red card for a relatively innocuous challenge on Paul McGowan. Despite this, Celtic were relatively comfortable until with ten minutes left Madden awarded St. Mirren a penalty for a ‘foul’ by Izaguirre on Goncalves which was both a dive and outside the box. McGowan converted the spot kick. The game ended 1-1 and afterwards both managers were very critical of Madden, with Neil Lennon saying it was the ‘worst refereeing display seen in a long time’.
Yes, Madden was truly awful, but that shouldn’t distract from the fact that this was yet another awful domestic showing from Celtic. The team just doesn’t seem to be clicking at the moment, it seems very disjointed. Aside from the goal the only real chance created Gary Hooper ballooned over. The lack of creativity is a real problem, the injury to James Forrest and now Kris Commons is affecting that side of the team badly. Surely yesterday was an ideal game to introduce Tomas Rogic or even Paddy McCourt to inject something different into the team?
The form of certain players is also a real problem, particularly Fraser Forster and Gary Hooper. Forster just hasn’t been the same player since coming back from injury, and he almost cost Celtic a goal yesterday when he raced out of goal for a ball he had no chance of getting. It’s a bit different with Gary Hooper, who has been virtually invisible since the January transfer window. In fact since the window closed he has only scored goals, which isn’t really good enough. The blog said so at the time, but Celtic were playing a dangerous game in electing not to sell Hooper and keep him for the Juve games, which has proved to be a mistake. We probably should have sold him in January.
Now we come to the issue of motivation. At times the players just seem to be going through the motions, especially since the exit from Europe. This has lead to such poor performances as the second half at St. Johnstone, the dreadful second half at Ross County and almost the whole of Sunday’s game, where St. Mirren looked more comfortable on the ball and kept it better than we did. These players should be doing much better, the league still isn’t won and we have a cup semi-final in two weeks.
After the game, Neil Lennon said he ‘didn’t know’ why some Celtic players were playing so poorly. This comment made me despair. A couple of weeks ago, after the Ross County debacle, Lennon said he was ‘raging’ and would ‘fix’ the issues in the team. Yesterday he all but admitted he doesn’t know how to do that. This is a real problem. We have a game in two weeks at Hampden against Dundee United which could prove to be a watershed for this group of players and perhaps also the management. A fourth consecutive Hampden defeat just wouldn’t be tolerated. It’s up to Lennon to motivate these players – who a couple of weeks ago were talking about having an early holiday to end the season – and make sure we don’t have any more poor performances like against St. Mirren. The team is needing freshened up, Saturday’s game against Hibs – who we haven’t beaten this season – would seem the right time to give the likes of Rogic and Gershon a chance, to see if they are up to the task of playing in the first team. It seems that some players, no matter how poor they play will never be dropped, which has been a problem of most recent Celtic managers to be fair. This season is in danger of petering out badly with only the SPL won in an unconvincing fashion – it’s up to Lennon and the players to make sure this doesn’t happen. I can’t see the fans being forgiving if it does.
Nail…..head!
In a nutshell, Celtic are absolute rubbish. They’re good enough to win a very poor league simply because no-one is challenging them for the title.
If there was a half-decent team in the SPL, they’d have taken advantage by now of the incredible number of points dropped by Celtic.
As it stands though, it looks as though Celtic will win the league with the lowest number of points won since the SPL came into existence. That alone explains how poor this team of overpaid “stars” actually are.
It’s long past time to let a few of them watch the game from the stand, and let others who actually want to earn their wages, fight for a spot on next year’s team.
SAME OLD SAME OLD BY CELTIC, THIS SEASON IS FINISHING VERY POORLY, IM SO TIRED NOW OF LISTENING TO LENNY BLEAT ON ABOUT CERTAIN PLAYERS NOT BEING MOTIVATED ECT, HOW HOOPER, AMBROSE AND EVEN MULGREW GET A START IS BEYOND ME, CELTIC ARE SO ONE DIMENSIONAL, VERY MEDIOCRE TEAMS ARE OUT PLAYING US, ARE MORE TACTICALY BETTER THAN US, NOW IV ALWAYS BELIEVED THAT THE PLAYERS DO WHAT THE MANAGER TELLS THEM WHEN IT COMES TO TACTICS ECT, IF THATS THE CASE THEN WE HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH THE MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE, IM NOW SERIOUSLY QUESTIONING IF LENNY HAS WHAT IT TAKES IN MOVING CELTIC FORWARD, HIS TEAM SELECTION AND TACTICS IN THE LEAGUE HAS BEEN DREADFUL, WHY HAV A BENCH WITH WATT, ROGIC, GERSHON AND NOT PLAY THEM WHEN OBVIOUSLY THE TEAM ISN’T PERFORMING, I HOPE IM PROVED WRONG WITH LENNON AND HE CAN GET CELTIC DOMINATING TEAMS AGAIN, BUT I UNFORTUNATELY I DONT THINK I WILL, HAIL HAIL, GOD BLESS THE CELTIC+
Another Poor Lennon-Celtic Performance. I often think of Neil’s first game against Ross County in the cup three seasons ago – when the team didn’t show up in the first half and then after Neil’s half-time team talk they still didn’t show up. I thought at the time he’d blown his big chance to be Celtic Manager and felt he needed to go a small club and serve his time just as McNamara has been doing and Big Jock did with Dunfermline (remember them?). I was shocked when he got the job but thought that maybe he could do it and he deserved a chance – I couldn’t do worse than Mowbray.
We had a great European run this season true but when I think about our domestic form this and other seasons, when I think about what’s happened to Rangers over the last two years, the financial pressures on the other clubs – then when you think that we have one of the best and biggest Stadiums, Supporters and training facilities in Europe, a wage bill (investment) more than the rest of SPL put together, the best players (all internationals) in Scotland, the best (and most) coaches in Scotland, a financial position which is the envy of Football clubs throughout the World I can’t help questioning is Neil Lennon the right person to manage Celtic. Has he ran out of ideas – is it time for him to move on? Probably yes.
Why does Neil persist with Hooper??? He’s turning out to be a complete liability.
We’ve got one of the best young strikers around sitting on the bench Tony Watt.
We are treading water and to be honest I can’t see any improvement comming from the manager or the players.
I am one of Neil’s staunchest supporters but I’m beginning to ask the question has Neil got the tools to motivate a team ? Several times this season I must admit the answer is definitely no.
He is now on charge of a team that is feared by absolutely no one in our league, in fact ALL teams expect to get a result against us. How is he going to address this????? That is the BIG question. Hail hail