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A Shocking Result In Paisley Leaves This Celtic Team With No Room For Error.

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That was the last thing we needed tonight.

The last thing.

Which is why I explicitly warned earlier today about the dangers, the very real dangers, of playing with a weakened team.

The manager says that Kyogo is not yet fit. His failure to include him on the bench tonight means that he will be asked to explain that over and over and over again.

And we still have a tough trip to Perth coming up.

If Kyogo plays in that the manager has even more questions to answer about tonight.

If Kyogo doesn’t play in that and they put eleven men behind the ball and play for a point, we’re in real trouble because we repeat the same mistakes over and over again on these nights; the football is too damned slow.

So much for “injury ravaged St Mirren.”

I don’t want to hear or read any story about their alleged heroics tonight. They had eight first eleven players on the pitch and made no effort whatsoever to do anything other than put men behind the ball.

It’s another triumph of anti-football at our expense, made worse by the certainty that they will be trounced at Ibrox this weekend. Like I said, I expect no favours, not from anyone.

We were always going to have to fashion our own and we have stumbled badly here.

Still, at least one question is being decisively answered in the long dark course of our injury crisis; Mikey Johnston is nowhere near the standard we require.

He has a reasonably good career awaiting him, at some mid-table team somewhere.

He is not even remotely good enough to be in a Celtic shirt, not now and probably not ever. You can only persevere so long in the hope that some natural spark of talent shines through.

He should be showing us something. He simply isn’t doing it.

There is no way to sugar-coat that tonight; it’s a dire result.

The worst of it that we were the only team in the game, the only team who tried to win the match.

The stats bear out a one sided beating without us landing a killer blow. Blame injuries. Blame fatigue. Blame all the usual things and make all the usual excuses; the history books won’t care.

The league table doesn’t care.

There are people in that side – Johnston foremost amongst them – who wouldn’t be near this squad if it was fitter of better equipped. Whatever the outcome of this campaign – and for the record I still think we’ll win it – the clear-out isn’t finished yet.

I had sincerely hoped that Johnston would show us, on nights like this, what he had to offer.

I actually think he has.

Sorry, son, but you’re not what we’re looking for.

As things stand we’re six points behind.

We have one last game before the curtain falls and I don’t see any way that we go into that shut-down in a better position that we’re in now. This was the one we could not afford to make a mess of, and we have.

Like I said, there’s no point in sugar-coating this and there’s no point in dressing up how grim the league table looks this evening, and will almost certainly look when the last whistle of this part of the campaign blows on 26 December.

That, of course, depends on us being a damned sight better at St Johnstone.

Oh man, frustrating is not the word for this.

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  • James Forrest says:

    Some proper bed-wetting on this thread now.

    Some of you seem to have chucked it. Thankfully this team won’t.

  • Mark B says:

    Shocking. Not just MJ but Abada is actually worse. Also set pieces we need to fix we have corner after corner and never look like scoring. They had two corners and looked like scoring with both. We need some aerial threats and defence. This has already cost us this season. They had 17 year olds playing. This and dropping five points to Livingston and not being able to win against our main rival likely means we won’t win the league.

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