Here’s what bothers me most about what we watched.
The equaliser had been coming.
Too many players were not on it, especially in that second half.
The performance overall from coming in after the break was so, so far from what we expect and what we hope for that it was like watching a different team, one that was weak and easily bullied, one that could not keep its composure, one with no organisation.
I take back every word I said about McInnes before the game.
Because it looked for a long time in that second half as if he did have us figured out, and that is as much down to our own failings as his being some sort of tactical genius.
But enormous credit to him – the first and hopefully last time I’ll ever write those words; his team did not sit back. It did not contain. It did not try to defend.
They got in our faces. And we didn’t like it.
Worst man in the Celtic team today? There were a lot of candidates. But I thought Natt Phillips was abysmal. Absolutely abysmal. He was certainly not alone, but I thought his performance was rank. It damns Rodgers that he left him on the park for the duration.
He surely has to be going back down the road in January and if you’re going to tell me that we’ve not got a better option than him in Nawrocki or Lagerbeikle I refuse to believe it.
A couple of times now when he’s played, he’s looked shaky. Today, he got plenty of time to show us what he could do. It was terrifying to watch.
The whole performance was terrifying to watch.
Bad enough that we seem to find it really hard to break down ultra-defensive teams, which is what we face just about every week … if we can’t stand up to a team which presses our players on the ball then we are in a lot of bother, we are going to drop lots of points.
That second half was worse, far worse, than the first half was last weekend.
Nothing about it looked right.
We were a shambles. This team looks out on its feet, but how is that possible? It wasn’t just a failure of one or two footballers today, that was a collective mess. The second for Kilmarnock had more of an inevitability about it than us scoring a winner.
I can rant and rave and I can moan about that.
It deserves all that and more.
It was a disgrace. Something has gone badly, badly wrong with the machine.
It is not working as intended. It is not functioning right at all.
But the important thing I take away from this is that Rodgers has big, big questions to answer after that. We’ve lost to this joker twice in a season and plastic pitches have damn all to do with this … we won comfortably on that same pitch twice in the last campaign.
Nothing went right with that today. Not one thing.
No intensity. No urgency. No quality.
We’ve given our rivals a massive lift at the worst possible time, and short of handing out more verbal roastings Rodgers doesn’t seem to have answers.
That’s the truly scary thing.
He took too long to make any changes today, and they weren’t even the right ones. We needed an extra body in midfield and he would once have been able to see that clearly.
So a collective failure, and not just on the pitch.
Rodgers got that wrong today.
Leaving Natt Phillips on the pitch was wrong. Leaving Johnston and Palma on as long as he did was wrong. We could have sacrificed one, or both, of them for the extra midfielder and competed more for the ball. I cannot fathom a single one of his changes or the logic behind them.
This was not like other bad performances this season.
Kilmarnock did not, as I expected, sit back and let us have the ball. They did not pack their own defence. They smelled blood today and they went out for it. We were passive. We were weak. We were pathetic, in fact, in every department, in every way, from back to front, and even on the touchline.
There’s no point in ignoring that.
We rallied last week after a dire first half, and this week we’ve turned in a second half that made that one look like sexy football.
I said last weekend that was the worst 45 minutes I’ve seen from Celtic in years; that, today, is the worst 45 minutes I’ve seen from Celtic in a decade. Neil Lennon was manager at this ground and was 3-0 down at half time the last time I saw a team in our colours play as bad.
I don’t want to hear excuses from Rodgers.
None will suffice.
He can talk all he wants about quality. Derek McInnes, with vastly inferior resources, has beaten this guy twice in a few short months and today he did it comfortably, easily, with plenty to spare.
That’s on him. That’s nothing to do with the transfer policy, nothing to do with the tools at his disposal, nothing to do with plastic pitches or VAR or refs … the manager carries the can for that. This is his system. This is his style. This is how he wants this team to play.
From now until that window opens, I don’t want to hear any more out of his mouth about us needing quality. We have enough in this squad to beat a Derek McInnes team. Even with injuries. Even with key players out.
I said in the summer, if he wants certain players, of a certain type, he needs to fight for them. It’s his failure to do that which has hampered him, and its high time we stopped letting him hide behind excuses.
He talks too much about lack of quality; the guts of this side won a domestic treble last season playing football ten times more attractive than this garbage we’re watching now.
This is a collective failure, absolutely, but he’s the man at the helm and if this season unravels – and it could, it really could – he will carry the can.
We ain’t winning the league, another terrible performance, they will be leaders after the next game with us, I think Brendan will be away shortly something is badly wrong.
When it comes to “quality” Celtic have, by far, the best players in Scotland. The team are paid their wages out of the hard-earned or pocket-monies of the supporters. They were short-changed. Watching on telly was just as disappointing. Don’t they know how lucky they are to represent the best club in the world ? If they want to ‘roll over’, go through the motions, we can all stay at home to do that.
Are we watching another ‘managed decline’?
Is Lennon waiting in the showers again (with Broony by his side)?
We won a treble last season, this season there is every chance we could win nothing, There is a whiff of the failed 10 in a row season about that performance today.
I had doubts about BR coming back, but I hoped my doubts would be unfounded, and that he would be as successful as 1st time around.
The 5 League games before the winter break are now crucial, we have to win every game to stop this season unravelling.
Said to my mate last week, Celtics bottle looks like crashing,, today it well and truly has,,,huns will win the league if there’s not drastic improvement,I’m not very confident though,,,,,,
Everybody should calm down, there is plenty of time to go, If anything it makes for a more interesting and exciting league. Celtic will win the title, after Christmas they will do there usual and go on a winning streak that they do season after season. We lost a match today, I mean big deal it’s only 1 game, it’s our first in the league this season. I think people need to stop being so arrogant and just expect too beat everybody we play, that was always a potential banana skin today, and Mcinness is no mug, he knows how to set a team up. I just take it as a bad day at the office, it happens and I have no doubt we will use it to our advantage. HH
eh! Rogers did not lose the league to The Rangers so what did Gerard benefit actually??
There wasn’t any player in the hoops who got passmark today, not even our go to guys like MacGregor and O’Riley.
Hart? Finished, Taylor? Rotten, Phillips? See ya, Oh? I thought he had something, he doesnt! Palma? Believes his hype, both Johnstons? One has gone way off the boil from last season, the other can go anytime soon!
What did Rodgers think Kyogo was going to do when he sent him on? He has gone backwards since that headbutt from that Aberdeen player, he looks a totally different guy who’s afraid for himself, TBF who could blame him when the SPFL is full of thugs.
As for that game today, first half we have a good shout for a penalty when a Killie player did a Bernabie and stopped a goalbound header with his arm and his back to the ball, there was a deliberate shirt pull on O’Riley to stop an attack which IS a yellow card offence, nope, not from the ref Munro who had clear sight of it. It seemed to me every Killie player who fell to the ground got a free kick, but not the same when it was a Celtic player. This game is the first ever time I turned off before the end after Kilmarnock went ahead, we were rotten, and Aberdeen apart, we have been for too long!!!
Rodgers was responsible for Leicester being relegated. Let that sink in.
At the end of the day, we were going to have to beat Sevco and that is looking more and more unlikely.
Someone mentioned Scales recent drop in quality. It is the Celtic coaching staff to blame, both Christie and Scales bloomed at Aberdeen and Mikey Johnson would benefit from a spell there.
Rodgers is in the same position as Lennon was and should go early for the benefit of the team.
An upset fan. That’s what you read like, nothing more. You’re normally better than that. The objective truth is that the pitch, elements, injuries, and huge pressure from the opponent caused us to lose a tough away match against a good manager. All luck went against us, which happens in sport. A perfect mix cost us 3 points, nothing more. Wouldn’t surprise me at all to win home versus Feyenoord, and then stomp Hearts at home, beginning a run of victories all the way to the long winter break. No crisis here, long season and players will get healthy and more will come in to help. Phillips, McCarthy, etc will be gone in a month, addition by subtraction. Close title race, which is normal, as the west Glasgow bunch are not nearly as awful as we all thought. We will likely end up winning the league by 4-7 points, as May is a very long time from now. Cool off, relax, and let the professionals handle their business. We have lost only 1 league in over 12 years, and are currently ahead in this one as well. Hail Hail.
This has been coming for weeks now, the performances during the last couple of months have not been up to our standard. The article above hits the nail on the head several times. The lack of urgency is most worrying and add Brenden Rodgers tactics or style of play is disappointing to say the least.
James – some of us have been saying this literally from week 1 when he decided to play Turnbull ahead of Hatate (or week 3 when we lost to Killie the first time). BR has taken a wrecking ball to Ange’s juggernaut and we are a shadow of the team as a result This is why I will not allow any of the “we can’t compete in Europe for lack of funds” excuses that people trot out! Killie (twice now, Motherwell, Hibs and St Johnstone have competed with us despite having literally less than 10% of the income we do!! Two weeks ago I wrote we were in a dog fight to win the league – today proved it!!
Maybe we have the 72m in the bank for a reason.
In the 10iar season we had a the chance to finish them off for good. This season we have the chance to drive them into the ground again and it looks like the job Peter’s done since coming back in January is working again. Sold gg and jj as soon as he arrived back in the building. Replaced with a project signing and an inferior right back to the one we had. Sold jota and if it wasn’t for pot luck stumbling onto palma we would have been left with what we had. Sold starfelt and replaced him with liam scales who was so far out the picture he was lucky to be in the first team squad picture. We signed two centre half’s that Roger doesn’t look like he fancies,hence the reason Phillips started today. Who looks worse than the big Irish fella we signed a couple of years ago. He is terrible. Also,surely we have a young lad in the b team better than taylor?? Worst full back we have had in 30 or 40 years. The boy is absolutely rank rotten. Something is seriously wrong here. We had a team that was swotting teams like killie away for fun last season. The shape is wrong and there doesn’t seem to be any desire. Either the players don’t like the system or don’t like Brendan.
Something needs to change,and soon
Whatever happened to we never stop?
Departed with the last manager.
Aside from being passive on the second goal, I thought Scales was quality and certainly the best footballer in Hoops, albeit every other player was subpar to awful comparatively, most of all Philips. Scales had some incisive, central passes during the first half, as well as breaking lines far more effectively than Philips meager-paced attempts, and, even when the quality of play dwindled exponentially in the second half, Scales still was decent, one of very few positives I can take away from the match.
Scales lacks in conviction the tackles CCV excels at – and I am rather afraid of management dulling himself as a footballer, which I have mentioned before – but overall I think he deserves credit for his performance today out of an assortment rancid ones. What a travesty to not have Nawrocki instead of Phillips – at least when Matip concedes an own goal, he had been phenomenal the whole match before then. Phillips defensive display was atrocious.
I felt sorry for Matt O’Riley today as he always gives his all even when not being great. This pile of crap can be traced back to summer and the two Liewells. I will never trust them to have the best for the club at heart. Money is all that motivates them. Rogers’s tactics and substitutions leave a lot to be desired and I do agree with your comments about him telling the fans truthfully what is going on behind the scenes but I know he won’t as he is Desmond’s patsy.All Ange’s good work has been undone in 5 months. Most Celtic fans could do better than mini Liewell. I trust not one of us would have identified Nat Phillips as even decent. How bad must Nawrocki and Lagerbielke be when that carthorse is given a game ahead of them. I am going to ask Santa for a goalkeeper, a left back, a midfield beast and a goalscoring striker at the very least.
So who would you have as manager, there are quite a few unemployed Mowbray, Lennon, Broony, at this moment he is a hostage to fate having to play Mikey Johnston, bring on James Forrest. Please remember Ange also left us with a lot of these players and also had the most of these players new players in the pipeline, do we actually believe that Brendan was scouting in the South Korean second division?????
We’ve got the manager I would have chosen to replace Ange.
He just needs to start showing that he’s not worn out and done.
Dead right James, we were grim all over the park. However we weren’t bullied, just outfought by a side that were hungrier for the victory than we were. Phillips is murder, too slow, and that has been apparent since he first played for us. but seemingly he is committed in training and that get him the vote for the defensive role? The worst thing though, as far as I am concerned, is that McInnes has showed every other manager in the league how to play against us, don’t sit off us and defend for your dear lives, instead get in about us and put us off our stride and put the pressure on us, for it seems right now that we cannot handle that.I was looking forward to the Glasgow derby, but now I’m not so sure.