Today we won our second game in Japan, and it was a decent enough performance. We looked solid at the back, and believe me the media was watching for how we played defensively.
Although we’re about to bring in our new centre back they were salivating over the possibility that with Carter Vickers, Johnston and now Kobayashi out that we might be there for the taking. It didn’t prove to be that way. We looked solid enough, even in the second half.
How disappointing for the desperados at The Record and The Sun that they weren’t able to crack out the old fabled broken Celtic crest. They can put it away for another week at least; Wolves will give us a stiff test but it will be a good debut for those players whose signatures we can secure during the coming week. That should put us in a good place.
There were a couple of good performances today; I was impressed by how Welsh did. I was impressed by Turnbull, both playing in the first half.
Also playing in the first half – and I thought he was excellent – was James Forrest. Maeda continues to look superb played through the middle and he had a perfectly good goal chopped off because his movement turned out to be too good for the guy who was running the line.
When the camera flashed to him, I halfway expected to see Douglas Ross out there.
In the second half we got to see Holm play a part. I thought he put on a good show, although Rodgers did shout at him for a pass which didn’t try to find a forward man. Most intriguing is that we played two separate formations; we played the traditional 4-2-3-1 in the first half and what looked like a 4-4-1-1 in the second, with Kyogo playing just behind Oh.
It was important today that the game passed without us conceding, and whilst it would have been nice to see us run up a decent goal haul I think most of us were pleased to see the team continue to build fitness and get up to speed without drama.
That one ticked the boxes. The media was denied a whole week or writing about our defence. With a new signing in that area on the way, today nicely deprived them of their headlines whilst taking us a step closer to being read for the campaign.
Nice work, everyone.