Celtic Gutless At Every Level As Aberdeen Win With Ten Men

Today we saw the full scale consequences of failure at every level.

Let’s start with the manager.

Today, he’s lost a match against a team with ten men because his tactical system did not adapt to take advantage of that situation.

I’ve been a supporter of Ronny Deila, but it has become increasingly clear over the past few weeks that he simply does not belong at Celtic Park, if we’re to move forward and be the club the supporters want.

There is no prospect of him leaving any time soon though. He has the backing of the other person most to blame for this shambles.

And yes, I mean Lawwell, who has more defenders and fans amongst our support than is rational or logical.

Mark my words, under his “stewardship” we’re going to blow the epochal opportunity we had to dominate this game in Scotland for a generation.

We’re now in serious peril. Those waiting for the signs of life, of an improvement in the team’s performances, or from the manager … how much longer do you want to wait?

I listened to Deila’s comments over the last couple of days, about not losing sleep over our best players being sold. I found them staggering, and appalling, and the kind of thinking that belongs in the Norwegian league. They were not fitting of a manager of Celtic. That he had identified Nadir Ciftci as the number one target in the forwards position over the summer shows exactly how limited his thinking is, and how low we now set the bar.

We are an SPL team now.

Get used to it, because unless things change – radically – at every level of our club that’s not going to get any better.

We had better stop daydreaming about ten in a row.

We’re simply not going to get there, because sooner or later – and probably sooner – someone is going to put together a decent enough team and a good enough run of form to take the league flag away from us.

Some on other forums are already expressing their pleasure at us “having a challenger at last.”

I’ve never heard such defeatist garbage in my life.

For the record, I don’t want a challenger.

I want us to win every game.

By a hatful of goals.

It’s an excuse for an unacceptable display and a shocking defeat, and it’s a dreadful excuse as that.

Now, as a consequence of our constant backward drift a challenge is exactly what we do have … and we have that because we’ve allowed ourselves to be stripped to the bone, shorn of ambition and bereft of quality.

Today I watched as the same mistakes we’ve been making for weeks were repeated over and over and over again.

Our full backs, leaving their natural positions when the opposition has the ball, retreating into the penalty area, leaving the wings exposed and allowing wingers to whip the ball in.

Corner kicks where we mark zonally and leave men to get free headers.

An approach to set pieces in general which shows no signs of improving, because there’s no sign of it changing.

And the formation … one up front in Scotland. Shameful.

Tonight there’s going to be a lot of “oh stop moaning and get behind the team” and nonsense like “one bad result, these things happen …” getting flung about.

Keep those sentiments. I don’t want to hear them.

Anyone who thinks criticism is wrong at a time like this – when the whole club is going backwards – is a mug.

The inflexibility that got us here is now eating away at every single part of the club.

The board is wedded to downsizing.

The manager is wedded to the same, and to a tactical plan which is grossly unsuited to Scotland and is beginning to look cowardly, designed not to lose rather than to press teams and go for the throat.

A lot of our fans are equally stuck in an imagination free zone where they can’t even envisage better and are willing to settle for this dreck.

The infuriating thing is that, as I keep on saying, we do have the basis of a good team here.

But we have a CEO who will sell any player for whom we receive a good offer, a manager who’s happy to go right along with that and a playing system that is becoming a bad joke.

This is a bad spot we’re in here.

This wasn’t just one bad result.

Today, every weakness at Celtic Park, from the boardroom to the boot room, has been exposed in appalling fashion.

One good thing today; Leigh Griffiths. What a tryer.

What a player for the team.

He deserves better than to be stranded in a playing system that puts all this weight on him.

Things are not going to get any better.

Thursday is going to be a hard night, and if I might make a prediction it’s going to be an embarrassing one where every deficiency we just saw is going to be exposed even more horribly against the best team we’ve faced this season.

We are in a bad, bad spot right now.

Be under no illusions about that at all.