Celtic’s Tactics On The Day: The Brendan Rodgers 4-2-3-1.
We lined up yesterday with Brendan’s standard 4-2-3-1.
Ajer played in the uncustomary right back role.
He was ripe for being terrorised all day long, as he was going up against Murphy, who their fans think is some sort of hot shot. Had Lustig been fit the system would have incorporated Tierney and him as wing backs rather than as straight up left and right backs … Kieran was played much deeper than usual.
We employed what seemed to be a two man central midfield, with Rogic playing in the hole behind Dembele.
But in actual fact, he played deeper to counter their own midfield duo of Docherty and Goss. Sevco’s formation was actually identical to ours, but whilst Rogic did play in that more withdrawn role, Windass was pushed further forward.
He took advantage of Boyata’s error; look how far in front of the midfield he was playing. That’s what Dedryk underestimated and it led to the goal. Rogic’s run comes from deeper. It had to be perfect, and it was.
Windass’ position could have caused our defence trouble all day long, had they been able to get the ball through to him.
But Brown and Ntcham played very deep, and that cut off the supply.
Rogic allowed us to get the ball forward at pace.
It was a perfect setup from Brendan, and obviously the result of having watched Sevco’s games.
With Windass unable to influence the game, that left Sevco only with attacks from out wide. It was from there –they got goal number two with the run and the cross down our weakened right side. The cross into the box wasn’t defended properly and Candelas ghosted in.
The thing is, they created next to nothing on the left, and they did little on the right either. Their failure to properly exploit our right side, which was obvious all day long, showed how unable Murty was to put together a coherent plan, and that, crucially, led Brendan to the biggest call of the day.