Phil MacGiollabhain posted five articles yesterday and all were interesting. Yet it was a single fact in one of them that caught my attention; the one about Moussa Dembele and how people at Parkhead are worried that he is increasingly afraid of his own body.
They are referring to his hamstring of course, the injury that has recurred with him a couple of times. It’s not uncommon for players who suffer from those injuries to let it play on their minds a little; James Forrest used to be a prime example, but look at him now.
That’s to say that such an injury, and the mind-set it can bring, is not a career ender. It can be fixed. It can be worked on. It can be sorted.
Brendan, with his history in neurolinguistics, might be expected to be just the guy to sort out the heads of player who have mental weaknesses. He has certainly tried, as his frustration over Jozo Simunovic has proved. That show looks just about over.
But a few things are certainly explained by the idea that Moussa has some problems at the moment which have nothing to do with wanting a move.
It also taps into a different question; are Celtic’s players suffering a little psychological whiplash? This was raised over on the Facebook group last night, and it’s a question that intrigues me. Is our poor run of form down to the effects of a single result?
Celtic had started this season flying out of the traps. We looked as ready as I’ve ever seen us, as the crushing win over Astana at Parkhead proved. We got through the qualifiers and into the Groups, we were ready. And then the wheels came off.
PSG simply battered us. From looking Invincible we ended that game strictly second rate, and I know it worried a lot of fans. Did it also play on the minds of the players? On the surface, the answer would seem to be no; we recovered from that night at Celtic Park with some of our best league performances of the current campaign, and a win in Anderlecht. The 7-1 reversal in Paris saw us go on to win a cup final and inflict a stonking punishment to Motherwell at home.
But those games – the Paris one in particular – clearly took a mental as well as a physical toll. Jozo never looked the same player after it, and Sinclair has allowed his poor displays on the European stage to bleed into his domestic form. This team had the shakes against Hibs, even at 2-0 up. At Hearts we gave up when we lost the second goal, and then we sold the third right at the start of the second half to make sure of it. Against Sevco we were rattled.
One of the best things Brendan did for our team was the way he made them feel like they could go into every game in Scotland beating every team. But he also had their heads up for European football and I think many of them did believe they could cut it at that level doing exactly the same things as they do here at home. And I think it was a shock to them that they couldn’t and that this has hit home somehow.
The headline of this article uses the term “mentally drained”; let’s say rather that instead of remembering their abilities and their potential some members of this squad seem overly preoccupied now on their failings and their limitations. This is why we’re not taking that extra second to make sure a pass is going to the right player. It’s why Scott has lost the confidence to run at players and beat them. It’s why our defence looks shaky.
Fortunately, not only does the team have some time off to get their bodies in good nick again but we have just the man at the helm to fix what’s in their heads. Our players need to start remembering what made them invincible here at home in the first place.
And once we do that I do believe we’ll put together another of those superb unbeaten runs … the kind that wins titles, and trebles.