In the aftermath of Saturday’s game, a few hacks are already questioning Celtic’s defensive options, suggesting they’re not up to scratch.
Some are even writing off Austin Trusty, our new £6 million centre-back, despite the fact he’s barely settled into the team. Chris Sutton, in one of his more frustrating rants, was among those having a pop at him. I have to say, Sutton should have thought that one through before letting loose. It’s annoying, and I’ve highlighted it before: this rush to judgment from some quarters, particularly when it involves players who’ve just walked through the door.
Yes, some players hit the ground running, but others need time to adapt. Trusty has hardly had a chance to prove himself yet, and I’d like to see him play a few more games before making any rash calls about his suitability.
Part of the problem on Saturday wasn’t individual performances, but tactics—like the number of players we leave too far up the pitch.
Aberdeen’s first goal came from a long, speculative ball that caught us out of position. If we play like that against Atalanta on Wednesday, it’ll be a massacre. Scales got outpaced for that one, and Trusty was unlucky with the deflection for the second. That’s just bad fortune, and it could happen to anyone, so pinning the blame squarely on him seems unfair.
There’s also an issue people are overlooking: Trusty is a primarily left-footed player, and we’re asking him to play on the right side of the defence. That’s not ideal.
And, as I said in a piece before the Aberdeen game, it’s difficult to cope when you’re missing two key defenders—Carter-Vickers and Greg Taylor. You might get away with having one of them out, but missing both makes things that much harder.
We need to cut these guys some slack.
The problem on Saturday wasn’t the defence itself, but how exposed we left it. We had a ridiculously high line again, and it’s cost us, again. Rodgers needs to address this pronto. It’s not fair to single out individuals when the bigger issue is how we’re set up as a team. Pointing fingers at players like Trusty, who’ve only played a handful of games, is a lazy analysis, and I’m a bit disappointed Sutton has fallen into that trap. I’m not surprised some of the usual suspects in the media are on top of our big lad; they are going to make troubler wherever they can.
And you’ll notice this stuff never happens across the city. Has Propper looked like a great signing to you? Has Jefre, their so-called “Brazilian boy wonder,” impressed you as much as some of the Scottish press seem to think? They were talking up John Souttar the other day, but he had a dreadful game on Sunday. Is anyone criticising him for it? Of course not, except maybe on the Ibrox fan forums where they’re rightly scathing.
We’re always held to a higher standard, judged more harshly, while they seem to get a pass. What annoys me is when people like Sutton help the media push these narratives instead of calling it out for the nonsense it is.
There are issues defensively, of course there are. We’re conceding a lot of silly goals right now. But the only way through that is hard work and a look at how our players are positioned. A bit more of a common sense approach will cut out some of these errors. That should give the individual players a bit more breathing space whilst the likes of Trusty get up to speed.
Although I love the wee guy, wee Duracell will need to do better when back helping the defence, throwing a rash tackle in, in a dangerous area, cost us a goal against Dortmund and he did it twice against Aberdeen costing us another one. Brendan will have to get a grip of him and tell him to think carefully before fully committing himself, even if it means backing off a bit. We appreciate his work rate, but there has got to be a time and a place for his efforts, he has to be a bit more sensible about it.
Were is the game management. 2 up and our whole midfield bombing up the park together with both fullbacks. James a know you love Maeda but I think his football brain is questionable. Hes a fantastic athlete but some of his play decision making is school boy stuff
In the 1st half the Aberdeen front men hardly had a kick of the ball, the Celtic defence completely dominated the Aberdeen front men. As the players took the field in the 2nd half I noticed straight away that Nisbet and Clarkson had been withdrawn and Sokler and Duk had come on, I’m retired and maybe I’ve got too much time on my hands,but I do watch a lot of football and I knew right away that they would try and use the power and speed of the two subs if they were given open space to run into. Which was exactly what we gave them with our high line, Thelin seems to be a good manager but you didn’t have to be a coaching Einstein to see where we could be vulnerable, and they threatened us the whole 2nd half with through balls into space behind our defence.
We were two goals up, surely someone in our coaching staff should have spotted these changes Aberdeen had made, and alerted our M/F and Defence.
We seemed to be absolutely unaware of the new dangers we faced from these two subs.
I just hope we’re a bit more streetwise on Wednesday, we’ve got to try and retrieve some pride for our Club and can’t afford another European drubbing.
I think Rodgers sees Trusty as the better defender over Scales.
This is based on as you say him being played on the “wrong” side of the defence for his footing.
Surely you play your best defender that is available out of position as they should be more adaptable. Scales being kept on the left says to me that Rodgers knows he can do the job in that position but doesn’t have the confidence in him to be reliable on the right hand side.
I still believe the end game is for CCV & Trusty to be the cb pairing but Scales is playing excellent & dropping even once CCV is fit again is not yet justifiable. Maybe he’ll give CCV & trusty a run in the early rounds of Scottish Cup to gauge there chemistry.