Rugby Park Draw A Self Inflicted Wound

Tonight we saw the very best and the worst of Ronny Deila’s Celtic.

We started the game like a well oiled machine, and had we taken our chances and scored an early second goal you get the impression we would have buried Kilmarnock.

The Ayrshire side are truly dreadful and one dimensional.

That didn’t stop them scoring twice and overcoming our shockingly bad defence.

It will have Malmo’s manager – who was watching in the stand – smiling widely.

We do this to ourselves at times.

Izzy has been out of sorts for months.

We’ve dithered on finding a left back and giving him competition to focus the mind.

Tonight, he stumbled late in the game and conceded a penalty, which shocked no-one who’s been watching him of late.

Efe Ambrose, who I sometimes think gets a raw deal from our fans, had every one of the weaknesses in his game – especially his tendency to switch off at crucial moments – shockingly exposed. He was dreadful, absolutely dreadful, and has done himself no good long term.

We have a midfield that is overloaded and other areas of the team which are bleeding out accordingly.

All this talk of us going for Martin Odegaard on loan for a season looks like so much nonsense on a night like this when you would have killed to see a half decent centre back and someone pushing Izzy on the left.

By the way, the midfield didn’t exactly set the heather on fire tonight either.

But what worries me most is Ronny Deila’s tactical inflexibility in sticking with this often ineffectual 4-2-3-1 formation.

That formation works when you have really exceptional players who are on their game, but when the opposition sits and defends narrow and deep you long for battering ram football to break through them.

And in particular you long for two up front.

I like Ronny.

Everyone knows that.

I think this is the guy, who’ll take us far and fast.

He’s got great instincts and good ideas … but there are games, and an increasing number of them, where sophisticated concepts have to take a back seat to a hardnosed and less complicated approach.

Sometimes you do need to be direct.

This isn’t the last time we’re going to see a performance like this.

Frustrating. Infuriating. And un-necessary.

There’s not enough movement up front, not enough options for a midfielder who wants to make a forward pass.

What you get are teams putting two or more players on your lone striker and wingers trying to cross the ball into a penalty box full of opposing jerseys.

If a numpty like me, who sits in front of a keyboard all day, can see this … why the Hell is our manager sticking with a system that, on nights like tonight, isn’t going to work?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the performance fell away when Commons went off either.

He is the one creative outlet in the midfield capable of creating chances “in the hole”.

We need to be thinking ahead, right now, for the day he leaves the club.

Tonight could be put down to a blip, to a lapse in concentration from our defenders, to an inability to take enough of our chances, but this is an all-too-familiar song we’re singing.

Too much of last season was characterised by the same disjointed football and the same gaping issues.

Ronny needs to break out of his one dimensional approach.

Our front men to up their game.

Our midfield needs to stop switching off when it makes simple passes.

And our defence … God helps us, our defence needs to sort itself out and quickly.

Tonight I’m pretty cheesed off.

I know tomorrow I’ll feel better.

But some of that was just so stupid tonight, and so predictable beforehand.

What makes it worse, of course, is that we were given a game tonight by a team that on another day we ought to have taken five off, and it comes in the same week where John Collins’ comments to one of the hacks have been scrutinised like a piece of particularly damning courtroom testimony.

From now until the end of the week, the hacks are going to make Deila and Collins eat them with a large helping of humble pie.

And we did it to ourselves. It’s just awful.

People will say it is better that it happens now than this time next week.

That is so much excuse making.

Some of that shouldn’t be happening at all.

Fingers out all round, Celtic.

Get it together, fast.

We play like that against the Swedes and we are in big bother.

Congrats though to the supporters tonight.

You were magnificent.

The team owed you more than that dismal display.