RUBBISH REFEREE + RUBBISH PERFORMANCE = RUBBISH
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.