The Celtic boss is the picture of calm at the moment, except when he is being needled by the media and unfortunately that happens a lot these days. He handles it brilliantly though and is not beyond giving them some home truths.
The reason he’s calm is that he’s not seen anything that bothers him overmuch since the campaign got underway. Europe has been a huge disappointment, but his philosophy of the game is solid, as has been evidenced by the number of chances we’ve made.
The boss is not for turning, and really, why should he?
For all the media’s sniping over the results the man himself knows that the system is working, that we’re doing enough to get results if our forward players showed a little more composure.
They will, of course. The longer they play at this level, the more games they play in elite competition, the more they will learn to take that extra second or hit the ball that second earlier. All the other pieces of the jigsaw are there.
This is why he’s cool and calm and this is why he won’t get rattled.
There are signs of progress, and that’s all we needed to see. For all that, you still get the feeling that Madrid could be anything. It could be a long night or a very, very good one. Even qualified they will still be extremely good and extremely dangerous.
Either way, this is a manager who is not for changing his approach and why should he? Because not only does he believe that it’s right, but all the signs are good as well.
That makes it easy for him to field the questions. That makes it easy for him to stay loose.
Surely lessons to be learned from the previous Real Madrid tie.
Most went right .. we created over 50 chances over the 5 games .. just a little more composure and luck (ball moved a inch CalMac scores v Real , O Riley scores v Leipzig)
so the process is working ..
Ange has his head in the sand. He refuses to learn because he thinks he has nothing to learn. The “more experience” and “being more clinical” narratives are overplayed. The manager needs to address the obvious: tactics are important so is defending. Shakhtar drew with Real, Leipzig beat them, not because of their greater experience or being more clinical but because of their tactics. They didn’t give Real so many chances and they paid more attention to defending than we do.
And as regards experience: our more important players Calmac, Jota and CCV got very little experience. Will those who got experience this time be there next time? Who knows? If there, they may be out injured. As I said tactics are important and have to take account of what you are up against and who you have available in your team. Playing only one way whatever the opposition and circumstances is fantasy football.
Europa League would have been an excellent follow up in terms of experience but we blew it by not varying our play and not paying more attention to defending. So we got what Leipzig and Shakhtar didn’t get: NOTHING, ZERO, ZILCH.