Celtic’s Second Half Yesterday Had Everything We Need To See From This Team.

Many Celtic fans thought the first half yesterday was as bad as they’d seen this team play in this campaign. At half time, Celtic cyberspace was abuzz in fury, much of it directed at the manager for his change of tactics before the game kicked off. The general consensus was that the boss was about 45 minutes from having his head on the block.

It wasn’t just that we were trailing by a goal and looking in real trouble in this title race. It’s that there was just nothing happening at all to even spark life or hope. The team looked utterly bereft of confidence and ideas. And there was something worse.

You saw a team which looked absolutely all over the shop, as if the players had only just met one another. That was the worst of it, that feeling that you were watching not a team but a collection of complete strangers thrown onto the pitch at the same time. The idea that this was a functioning unit, that these guys could pull together, seemed ridiculous.

What’s worse is that all week long they’d talked the talk. How they were going to finally step up to the mark and show the rest of the league why we’re champions. There was talk of meetings. There was talk of showdown talks and clearing the air in the dressing room. That’s what we saw at the end of it all, that dreadful first 45 minutes.

And the second half turned the whole mood. The second half saw us up the tempo, saw us up the aggression, it saw the emergence of a genuine hero, and the team played like one. It knitted together somehow. They came out in the second half swinging.

If we’re going to win this title, that’s what we need. Not only the football but the attitude, and you saw what it meant to every player in the team at full time. They celebrated with more than just relief; it’s the first time in a while it’s felt like we were all in a collective endeavour, and that’s the real victory yesterday, that feeling that we were all on the same page.

The goals were excellent. Idah added so much to the team, but everyone pulled his weight and you saw it in everything we did in that second 45. Now we need to take that exact same attitude into the game against Dundee on Wednesday.

If we do that, we might yet pull this thing around.