Yesterday, the Republic of Ireland faced England and lost 2-0, and the match raised a few questions about the Republic of Ireland setup.
There was also strong attention paid to Lee Carsley’s very different version of what an England team might look like compared to Gareth Southgate’s, which was often pedestrian and boring to watch. Southgate himself is a good guy, but his style of football is hardly enjoyable. Carsley’s was much more engaging, even if I wasn’t exactly standing there cheering for it.
I caught glimpses of the game in a pub in Manchester after the Legends match, so my mind wasn’t entirely on it, but I was keeping an eye on Adam Idah, hoping he’d have a stormer and find the back of the net. Unfortunately, the service to him was awful. The English midfield controlled the game with ease, and Idah’s chances were limited to a single attempted header.
After the game, on the bus, I had a fleeting suspicion that there would be people in Glasgow writing negatively about Idah’s performance. And, of course, I was right because Copeland at the Sunday Mail did exactly that this morning. It didn’t take long for them to resort to the ancient standby of quoting some “uninformed tweet” from the odd disgruntled fan to prop up what was already a pretty feeble story.
The attack was predictable. The longer Adam goes without a goal for Celtic, the more aggressive these attacks will become. No Celtic player, especially a striker, ever gets a settling-in period. Idah certainly won’t because he was here last season, and so there are those who simply expect him to hit the ground running and start finding the back of the net as he was doing when the last campaign ended and those who hope he does not and they will undermine him any chance they get.
Once again, I’m reminded that we are not blessed with the smartest media in the land here, or people who know all that much about the sport they’ve been covering for their entire professional careers. It simply doesn’t work the way they think. Idah has been sitting on the Norwich bench all summer, while some of his Celtic teammates have played hundreds of minutes of football and have been drilled in the new system that Rodgers is implementing — a system that has already proved to be both effective and great to watch.
Any player would need time to adjust to that
We know what Idah brings to this team. We saw it last season.
A player doesn’t suddenly become inferior because they’ve signed permanently rather than being on loan. Adam Idah will settle in at Celtic and will prove to be a tremendous signing, but at the moment, he’s finding his feet, learning a new system, and trying to adjust to a new style of play. There is also a different kind of pressure when you’re a permanent signing compared to when you’re a loanee, but I have no doubt he will adapt to that.
I’m certainly not going to worry about it or get on the player’s back. I’m aware that there are some in the media who are already sharpening their pencils, ready to give this guy a hard time if he doesn’t score soon. I also have little doubt that some Celtic fans will become increasingly frustrated due to the size of the transfer fee if Idah doesn’t start finding the net.
But he needs time and a little patience. He needs people to be supportive, to stay off his case until he starts to find his rhythm — and that will come quickly enough. The manager will be working with him in training, making sure he knows what is expected and ensuring he understands every facet of the system in which he is expected to play a part.
This was a Brendan signing from the very beginning. Brendan knows what he has here and how to use it. So, it’s not just about having faith in the player, although most of us do, based on what we saw last season. It’s about having faith in the manager and knowing that he understands how to get the best out of him — as he did last season.
When we signed Idah, there was a lot of doubt, and that’s putting it mildly. There was outright anger over the signing, and I shared some of that because we didn’t have a right-to-buy clause, which made it easy to foresee problems if he slotted perfectly into Brendan’s team and started performing.
But Rodgers knew what he was getting. He knew the type of player Idah was and where he would fit into the machine he was trying to build. Idah is no less a player now than he was then, and if the machine is a little more sophisticated — which it is — all the more reason to have faith and believe that the player can step up.
He will have plenty of chances. Rodgers now has a squad that allows for rotation without losing the overall quality of the team.
In that system, we will see Adam Idah playing a starring role. Whatever happens next weekend against Hearts, it would be great if the match highlights included an Idah special. It would do him a world of good and might quieten those who want to see him fail. So, my one wish for next weekend — aside from three points — is that Adam gets some time on the pitch, gets some chances in front of goal, and puts one in the back of the net.
I was posting about the same thing today on TalkCeltic
We are going to have to give this boy time.
Imagine coming here on loan in January and the general consensus was who? A Celtic supporter plunged into a situation where we really needed to win every game after our mid season blip. Scoring important goals that helped win the title and then the last minute cup winning goal that writes your name in the history books.
How much of a high must that have been?
Then the manager publicly says he wants you permanently. So it was obvious that in private he was told we were bringing him here full time.
Back at his parent club they had changed manager, but Idah knows we want him and he would’ve been just waiting for it happen. We go with a lowball offer and it turns into a saga instead of going straight in at £6-7 million and putting it to bed early and letting him get his preseason with us.
His preseason was then far from ideal and I dare say his head would’ve been all over the place. We ended up paying a million or so over the odds because we left so late and panicked after Kyogo hit the turf at Easter Road.
So, we spend top dollar on the boy after the first week of the season. He’s missed all of our build up and arrives, at the time, as pretty much our most expensive signing. No pressure!
We know what he is capable of and he will get into his stride eventually, but I think it’ll take until October for him to get really motoring again.
In the meantime the media will start to sow seeds of discontent and discord by saying he’s not up to the price tag. Many of the dedicated non thinkers will believe it and get on his back on social media. It’s started today after the international game yesterday. That Football Insider lot are sticking the boot in already. Get ready for more of the same. It’ll be relentless until he gets a couple of goals under his belt.
Due to the ridiculous events of the summer and a signing that could’ve been sorted in June, it has hampered his full time start with us.
We need to be patient and he will deliver again.
Problem with the Republic is the 5 at the back, they were very shaky, the formation also made the midfield and forward line weak.
Service and support to Idah was nothing like he gets at Celtic.
The Republic would have been better with 4 at the back,
Idah made some decent runs, and had good movement, but the final ball by his team-mates trying to find him was horrendous! Too many over hit crosses missing everyone out.
The media is poisonous to anything celtic, wouldn’t take any of their papers for free , they long ago decided what fan would buy their farcical nonsense and unfortunately they chose sevco fans , their more delusional than ever because of that decision, thankfully the media chose them and not us .
It’s now the only way these rag tag fantasy headliners can sell their fading newspapers.
Their anti celtic bias is shameful.
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Couldt agree more james guy needs time to settle in he cant work miricles right away he has our suppòrt
Adam will get there – it’s a long and arduous season and the team have had a flying start, but aye he’ll get his chance and do just fine…
Of course the usual Scummy suspects will mischief make in their usual evil way but any Celtic player or supporter that is influenced by these lunatics needs a spell in a mental therapy unit…
Absolutely do not EVER be influenced by The Scummy Scottish Football Media !
Messi in his prime would have been useless for Ireland last nite we were outplayed by a far better team, that’s the general feeing here nobody expected us to bt England, Idah had no hope up top on his own with no proper passing from defence,only constant hoofing down the field.Nothing but pure nonsense from the Sevco loving media
As the great man himself ‘St Martin O’Neill’ stated towards the end of his tenature as Rep of Ireland manager, the Irish fans better prepare themselves for years in the wilderness of international football, as there’s no real talent coming through the ranks, our best, what we consider top talent here in the Ireland, can barely make the B and A squad of top-tier English sides, and that showed yesterday, Ireland were dire, it was a practice game for the English.
Jobbie Copeland was licking the ARSE and eating Cuntwells shit when he eas at sevco for 18 months,even bragging about Cuntwell scoring fancy goals in training for sevco.
Now Barbie is out the door the sane ARSEHOLE journalist is slagging him off for scoring the same type of goal in training for Blackburn and that the last thing Cuntwell should be doing here is brag about.
That Jobbie Copeland in a nutshell.
Journalists have column inches to fill and will sometimes write any old rubbish to to deliver some copy! sports ‘journalists’ are the bottom feeders of this ecosystem… the ones who really couldn’t write a decent piece on anything else due to their limited capabilities. Everyone should realise this… but they don’t!
Then there is the bias. Had Le Maneken Pish not broken Rabbi Matondo, and he’d played for Wales and not scored, would he have been subjected to this nonsense? We all know the answer to that one…
The same muppets that are declaring that Albanian boy a success story before he’s even kicked a baw for them