That was shameful. Absolutely shameful.
Let’s take an unflinching look at where we are today, let’s take stock of exactly what that might cost us.
The best home record in Europe has been wasted.
The record of never having lost at Celtic Park to Sevco has gone with it.
They no longer fear coming to our ground, and that’s pretty bad.
They played without any today, and they dominated us.
We were weak, timid and lacking in any invention when we had the ball.
We got what we deserved.
The chance to bury Sevco before the winter break is gone, and I thought that advantage was one that we needed if we didn’t want this lot hanging on our coat tails all the way to the wire. We might not get a chance to move this far ahead of them again in this campaign … that means fraught weeks and months in front of us, needless frustration, needless pressure.
We also face weeks of hysteria about how the tide has turned.
And after we’ve turned in two abysmal displays against them in only a few weeks maybe it has. For the second year in a row they go into the shutdown buoyed by a win against us. But this one is different. We had the game in hand last time, this time they do. If they win they edge in front of us.
And let’s finally say it; they look difficult to break down. They can keep on grinding out results as long as they aren’t under sustained pressure. Today we could have put them under the sort that buckles teams. Our failure was absolute. We were woeful.
Everyone is going to say the pressure is back on us, and of course they’ll be correct because it is. It wasn’t even that we failed to kill them today, it’s that we never looked as if we might. The cup final performance was bad. In many ways, that today was worse.
There are no excuses for that, no alibis at all, and I offer none and I hope Lennon offers none.
He ought to be concerned by what he saw today, that meek surrender in the key areas, that failure to get in Sevco’s faces.
All season long, I have watched teams do that to the Ibrox side, stepping off them, letting them have the ball, letting them dictate the play … they punish every side which does it and we rode our luck in the final. We were never getting away with it again.
At Ibrox, we did exactly to them what they did to us today.
How come they learned from the defeat but we couldn’t learn from the victory? Twice in a row we’ve backed off them and let them look like a football team and at the same time, we let them get in our faces; what was the thinking behind that?
Did we really expect them to come to Celtic Park and play on the back foot?
If we did Lennon hasn’t watched them enough in this campaign, because they do the same thing every week. They harass teams for the ball, and when given room to run they do it. We would do it. When we do we rip teams to pieces. It has cost us, big time.
We are now facing a long, tough, slog to the finish line, and I fully expect Sevco to win their game in hand now which means we’re chasing them.
For the next few weeks we are going to have eat this day over and over and over and over again and we should, and we will, because we deserve it, because we didn’t turn up, because we failed at the most basic tasks today and so failed at the larger and more fundamental one, which was to put that lot in a dark hole.
Pass marks today? Jullien, maybe, and Frimpong. Nobody else.
Forrest was shocking. Mikey was too easily pushed off the ball. Christie was greedy at times when he should have been smart … and whose idea was it to move Eddie off penalties? Ridiculous, and it too has cost us big time. Decisions like that come back to haunt you, and boy oh boy it has.
I’ll get to Morelos in due course; he earned the red card he got right at the end.
The people who have defended this unhinged thug and unrepentant cheat should be hanging their heads in shame along with the bulk of our team this afternoon.
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