The Critics Are Telling Celtic’s Manager Again How He Should Play. What Fools They Are.

That was hugely disappointing last night, but nobody was more disappointed than the Celtic boss. He knows exactly what went wrong and he said so. Had he been listening to Radio Scotland – the man surely had more important things to do – he would have been incredulous at their explanation for what we saw taking place.

At a time like this, everyone is an expert of course, but the sheer ignorance of what Ange has to endure at times like these is amazing. The culprit on Radio Scotland was Jim Duffy, who didn’t even wait for what Ange had to say after the game before he offered his own analysis. And you know what? They might as well have had Alan Hutton or some other ex-Ibrox goon in there for all the sense that got talked. He was abysmal.

Celtic need to be more cautious? Really? Did he watch the game? Did he listen after making those remarks to Ange’s far more precise and sophisticated analysis? It’s almost as if these people are too lazy to think properly about what it is they are saying.

We didn’t lose the game because we were too gung-ho. Ange called it right. We lost for the opposite reason; because we played with fear. We played as if we expected to be on the back foot. We weren’t cut open by being too aggressive. We sat off them, we let them control the tempo of the game, we let them do what they are so, so good at.

Of the three goals, only the first was caused by a lack of caution and foresight. Callum was too far up the pitch with the ball, and he left himself one Hell of a lot to do when he gave it away. Ultimately that was what cost him, and the team, on that one.

But the real damage was done- as Ange pointed out – by our passivity, by our lack of aggression. Had we done as Duffy suggested, and sat back, we’d have been no better off for it. The performance was not great today but it was better than the gutless, inept display from the Ibrox club at Anfield and that’s what Duffy would have had us do.

Not this Celtic team. We will succeed, or we will fail, based on the way the manager wants us to play. It is intellectually lazy and fundamentally dishonest for anyone to make the claim that Celtic lost last night because they were too gung-ho. If only they had been. Ange and the majority of the support can only lament that it was not so.