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No Squad Depth? Then Next Season Brendan’s Going To Have One Hell Of A Selection Problem.

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Today, Tam McManus made one of those stupid interventions that makes you wish ex-players were banned from offering so-called “analysis.”

He said Celtic’s squad depth is not as good as has been made out.

Garbage. Our squad depth is fine.

It’s the depth of our injury list that has caused the problems, and when that is resolved we’ll see who has squad depth.

Squad depth, in fact, is itself the problem and that problem is going to be exacerbated when players who are out on loan come back. We’re going to have more options than we know what to do with, and more opportunities for tactical flexibility.

But can we really keep all these guys at the club when so many won’t play?

Can we really play a squad rotation system which means that there’ll be no consistency of selection?

It works for some clubs, but can it work for ours?

Here’s a look at the scale of the “problem” … I call it that because you have to call it something, but as worries goes this is a good one to have.

What Do We Do With Our Returning Loanees?

The first problem is obvious; what do we do with our returning loanees?

I refer, of course, to Scott Allan, proving again that he can play in the SPL every week with ease, and Ryan Christie, who as regular readers will be well aware is a player I think is a class act.

In both cases the answer seems obvious; Scott should probably be allowed to stay at Hibs. The most confusing signing in years, he is clearly not going to play under Brendan Rodgers unless he works absolute miracles at Easter Road and then I’d still have my doubts.

It’s a shame for the kid too, because he’s obviously a good footballer who would have something to offer another club, as he’s proving under Neil Lennon.

But he’s not quite up to the standard of playing for Celtic.

The same cannot be said for Ryan, who is out on loan because Brendan has transformed the fortunes of footballers like Callum McGregor and James Forrest. He is easily good enough to play for Celtic week in week out, and Brendan appears to have acknowledged this.

He has no intention of letting the player leave the club for Aberdeen or anywhere else.

But Ryan is no good to us sitting on the bench, so if he does return I would hope that he would play.

But that brings us to sticky point number two.

Creative Midfielders Galore When Everyone Is Fit.

When everyone in our squad is fit next season we will have no end of creative midfield options. Brendan signed Musonda because you can never have too many of these, but in our case I think we might be stretching it a little bit.

Callum McGregor, Tom Rogic, Stuart Armstrong and Musonda himself are all at the club right now. You could argue that Ntcham plays the same role, although I think the defensive side of his game is better than his attacking side at the moment.

Rogic is coming back to full fitness. Armstrong will be shortly. That’s four, perhaps five players for that role.

Allan plays in that position and so does Christie.

One of those guys will leave, for sure. Will two?

Where does Christie fit in with that lot? Even if you assume that one of them will leave – and there are persistent rumours about Rogic and the Armstrong issue is well known – is Christie really going to be third or fourth choice?

Would he come back to the club to do that?

Would we want him to?

Assume none of them leave.

Assume Brendan wants as many options as possible, because of the system he wants us to play.

It’s great being able to choose from so many of them, right?

But does it, itself, create a potential imbalance in our side?

The Creative Solution: Play Two Of Those Midfielders Instead Of One.

The system we play is interesting and gives us interesting options; our team utilises three men in the middle of the park. One of those is invariably Scott Brown, a defensive midfielder. I like Ntcham beside Brown because their styles complement each other and each allows the other to take a second extra on the ball. Brown will play every week that he is fit and able. Which leaves two midfield positions to be fought over.

Imagine we fill two of those with attack minded players; that’s the system we played for the better part of last season and changing that might be why we’re not doing quite so well in this campaign. I think Ntcham can perform an attacking role, but he is not as good in that role as Armstrong or Rogic would be.

This is part of why we’ve not been at our best.

Last season the manager went with Brown, Armstrong and Rogic where he could.

When one of the two attackers wasn’t fit Callum stepped in. It’s all and well and good saying that we should go back to that system when everyone’s available, but Ntcham is blossoming into one Hell of a player and I would be loathe to take him out of this team.

In the end, a manager like Brendan sets about his talk viewing the squad as a toolbox.

You don’t use a screwdriver when what you want is a hammer. Each job is different. Each opponent represents a different set of challenges.

Some think we lacked creativity yesterday; the truth, though, is that we might have had too many creative players on the pitch.

What we needed yesterday, in that rough-house game, was some dig.

The Zenit System: To Little Bang For Our Bucks In The SPL?

I’ve seen Celtic midfielders that were comprised of bruisers, and they went through Scottish teams like a dose of salts.

Our manager wants to play football, which is why it was so pleasing that the side we put out at Celtic Park on Thursday did so well, and played such a good attacking game, despite lacking the kind of creative drive we appeared to have at the weekend.

But the problem at the weekend was the lack of a team who could battle it out.

The midfield three against Zenit were all more defensively minded, hard-tackling grafters who they couldn’t cope with and didn’t expect; Brown, Ntcham and Eboue.

We switched to a more attacking system later on; by that time we had run them ragged.

Had that midfield three been available at the weekend – Brown was suspended and Ntcham was ill – I think we might have run the St Johnstone midfield to the point of collapse and we certainly would not so easily have been pushed off the ball.

There are other SPL teams – like that abject Hamilton team – who you can play an expansive attacking game against. Others require more brawn than brains, more grit than genius. Brendan knows that, which is why he’s signed Ntcham.

By the way … this pays no need to where we’d play Nir Bitton.

This is all about trusting the boss. He knows what he’s doing. I know he got criticism for the team selection at the weekend, but with two of our key players unavailable above and beyond the injury list we have no idea what team he would have picked had he been able.

McManus is a clown because the weekend wasn’t an example of squad depth not getting a result; it was an example of the absence of squad depth, of a manager being forced into a tactical choice which had nothing to do with picking and choosing but was all about necessity.

This Is Why No Two Up Front … Or We’d Need To Go Three At The Back.

Celtic does not play a 4-4-2. Brendan has built a system that suits our options.

Try imagining a 4-4-2. Who would you play in it?

You could go with Armstrong and Callum out wide if you wanted to play without wingers in a narrow system, and go with Ntcham and Armstrong in the middle.

Play with wingers and drop two out of four.

The alternative is to go three at the back and play three in the middle of the park.

When it works it works like nothing else; it was the system most commonly utilised by Martin O’Neill when we were taking teams like Juventus on and beating them.

I like the 3-5-2 and I think our squad would be very suited to playing it. That allows two defensive midfielders, an attacking midfielder, two wingers and two up front. There is not a team in Scotland who could stand up to a system like that.

But predictably, there are problems with it.

Too many options is one of them.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Kieran Tierney?

Kieran Tierney is why this team doesn’t already play three at the back on a regular basis.

Because it means dropping perhaps the best attacking full back in Britain. Play three at the back and you can put him in central defence – Brendan has done it – but you lose that dynamism he brings to the left side of the pitch and that means a lot of chances.

Play him as a winger and you create another dilemma; do you drop an on-form Scott Sinclair to accommodate that change? Ryan Christie, Musonda, McGregor and Hayes can all play left midfield on top of that, which says nothing about Lewis Morgan.

Not one of them – even Sinclair, who can be moved to the right or play behind a single striker, as one of a front two, or in the hole – would make it into the team in front of Tierney on the left. He is the quintessential First Pick On The Team Sheet … possibly even before Brown.

Wide right we actually have less options … but Forrest is there, Musonda can play there, so can Christie and Sinclair and all before Patrick Roberts. Yet Roberts will leave and none of those players is a natural in that role, although I suspect Morgan is being brought in to give Forrest some competition in the next campaign.

But on the left we have a wealth of them.

Which sounds good in theory … but not if means you become predictable.

Scott Sinclair: A Riddle Inside A Mystery Wrapped In An Enigma.

Scott Sinclair is our top scorer this season, but things are clearly on his mind.

He was the player of the year stand-out in the last campaign, and I just hope that everything with him resolves itself. But in truth, his is the position most at threat from all these options.

He can adapt though. He can play anywhere in the final third, as he’s proved.

But when he is not on form you can’t justify selecting him “just because.”

His partnership with Tierney is our most potent attacking weapon when it’s working and Kieran is bombing up the wing and Scott is cutting inside.

It’s a waste of a player when it isn’t.

Some have suggested he’s a one season wonder; I don’t believe that, although his career offers some supporting evidence of it. He’s just never had a manager who trusts him the way Brendan does and adapts the game to his strengths.

Last season he couldn’t put a foot wrong … this season? I don’t know.

It’s hard to imagine the squad without him, even when he’s not playing at his best.

If he can recapture the form of the last campaign and reforge that devastating partnership with Tierney then that will, in a sense, tie up the left side of the midfield for the foreseeable future … but is that good or bad?

Perhaps a move right is what he needs?

But if you do that, how do you drop Forrest, this year’s player of the year?

James Forrest: As Safe As Houses, Right? Actually No.

If any player presents Brendan with no obvious question it has to be Forrest, who has shone on the right side of midfield and was even keeping out a fit Patrick Roberts. With Roberts unlikely to be at Celtic next season that makes Forrest one of the safest guys in the team.

Right? Wrong.

Christie has played wide right and so has Musonda. Sinclair, as I’ve said already, can play anywhere.

Lewis Morgan is coming in and that’s clearly for competition.

On top of that, Hayes has played there as well, as Armstrong can play there as part of a midfield four.

Which is to say nothing of a system where Brendan goes two up front and plays a three-man central midfield with one player in the hole. You can play a similar system with two attacking midfielders playing behind a single striker … a narrow 4-3-2-1.

Brendan might even go with 4-2-3-1 … which would see us go with Brown and Ntcham or Eboue in the middle with Rogic, Sinclair, Musonda or Rogic, Sinclair, Armstrong, or McGregor and any variation of the rest … and no wingers at all, relying on Kieran and Lustig as wing-backs, a role Kieran in particular is perfectly well suited to.

Forrest’s position is not safe; it just depends on how Brendan wants to play it.

Strikers. But How Many And Who Will They Be?

Assume it all. Assume Dembele goes and Edouard goes back to PSG.

Think that’s it? That Griffiths is our first choice.

Guess again. Brendan’s toolbox approach would almost certainly see us go out and buy two new strikers in the summer window. A top club needs three strikers, even if the playing system only requires one. And that’s exactly how it’d be.

I think Edouard will sign on a permanent deal. I know a lot of people don’t get it but they’re not on the coaching staff at Celtic Park.

I also have a sneaking feeling that Dembele isn’t going to go either; the move isn’t right for him just now, the timing of it is wrong, the quality of clubs not up to his standard. The World Cup finals dream is probably gone already so there’s no rush for him to do it to play in the French national team.

Either way, there’s no chance of Leigh having it all his own way; he’s got to fight for his place right now and that’s how it is going to be in the future.

Brendan has been desperately unlucky with the injuries we’ve had. We are assembling quite the set of options here.

And I’ve not even mentioned the back line where if everyone stays and everyone’s fit we can now choose from Simunovic, Boyata, Hendry, Ajer, Bitton and Compper in the middle and could move Lustig there if need be.

Lustig, Hendry, Ralston and Gamboa all compete for the right back role.

And whilst my concern is that Kieran is too important to leave out, he does need competition and he has it in the form of young Miller who has not disappointed when I’ve seen him.

This is a squad and a half.

No depth? I’d say rather than McManus has no clue. Injuries have hit us hard … but that problem will not be with us forever … and some forgotten players will be coming home.

Brendan’s biggest headache then will be who to leave out.

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