“Controlling The Game” Was Not Enough Today And We Shouldn’t Pretend Otherwise

Ange’s pre-match press conference today turned out to be pretty bad; he says he thought that we we “controlled the game” and that our performance didn’t get what it deserved.

I thought we got exactly what we deserved.

For the first time this season I’m going to say it; if he believes that he watched a different match than the one I did.

At a time like this there’s always a certain amount of protecting players from a harsh verdict which in hindsight they might not deserve. But anyone who watched that today knows it was the complete opposite of excellent. Our first half display here last time we visited Easter Road was excellent; we scored three and could have scored more.

It would have taken an act of God to get us three today from that insipid garbage we had to watch, that one-note football.

I refuse to accept that verdict, it is just wrong in every way.

When he said in midweek, after Bodo, that we played better against Leverkusen at Celtic Park on the night they stuck four past us I agreed wholeheartedly. You can lose games and offer more than we did this afternoon.

We have lost games this season where we offered more.

That performance does not merit his protecting the players from the harsh reality.

In fact, it’s too important a point in the season for him to even pretend to be satisfied with that sort of dreck.

If he’s genuinely telling us what he thinks instead of hiding his frustration and saving it for the dressing room then for the first time in a while we have cause for concern.

No manager who watched a team such as ours, with the players available to us, toil for an entire 90 minutes like that can possibly be satisfied with it far less think it was excellent.

That didn’t even meet the definition of acceptable.

This is exactly what I was writing about the other day when I talked about symbolic victories; controlling the game is worthless if you lack the cutting edge to secure the points.

You don’t get trophies at the end of the season for the games you control.

You get them for the ones you win.

We got out of jail in a big way today. I refuse to believe that he is happy with what he witnessed.