In football, quality tells. Where did it tell today? A lot of people seem to want to round on Ryan Christie, as if his red card made a huge difference today.
I’ll tell you right now that it didn’t.
We still had vastly better footballers on the park.
We should have won that without him.
Rodgers used to practice for these scenarios. I have no doubt that Lennon still does. To blame Ryan Christie is to let every other Celtic player off the hook.
Too many of them simply didn’t show today.
The central defence has been exceptional at certain times this season, but Ajer looks lost at the moment and that has shown in successive weeks. Jullien had his worst game in a Celtic jersey today and got suckered into a niggling battle with a centre forward who got inside his head and owned him for the rest of the match.
The midfield was non-existent.
Callum McGregor needs an extended break like no other player ever has. Lennon said he’s too good to drop; that’s a lunatic statement, to be honest, and if he persists with that view we’re going to watch the steady deterioration of Scotland’s best midfielder until playing him is the equivalent of being a man down.
Forrest was anonymous.
Elyounoussi is a fine footballer, but he needs to toughen up.
He was pushed off the ball all too easily at times in that match.
Christie’s act of lunacy – for that is what it was – doesn’t change the fact that our two wide players failed to make up for his absence, and in truth hadn’t done much whilst he was on the park.
Edouard laboured alone. The one man up front system floundering against a packed defence yet again, although having two up front made little difference after we’d reverted to public park football. None of that was the fault of Ryan Christie.
When a team is up against it the way we were today, after Ryan’s sending off, it is the responsibility of every other footballer on the pitch to dig deep.
They failed today in spectacular fashion.
It is one of the most abject displays I’ve seen from the team, as a whole, in a long time.
We deserved nothing, we got nothing, and the blame should be evenly shared.
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