Sometimes, when I complain about the hacks, it’s not the big things that get to me. It’s the small stuff—the casual mistakes, the lazy errors, or the things they get wrong because they’re too ignorant or just plain stupid to grasp the details. One journalist is especially adept at this: Gary Keown. He not only gets the small stuff wrong but often misses the bigger picture entirely.
Keown will never secure a place in our hearts, nor will he ever win any major honours for insightful writing, let alone perception or sophisticated analysis. This is not a sharp man. He’s not someone who would have had a media career back when standards mattered in Scottish sports journalism.
He wrote a piece last night about our game yesterday. Fair enough, except it started with such an outrageously stupid premise that I couldn’t read the rest of it without fixating on how fundamentally flawed his viewpoint was. He claimed Celtic won the game yesterday with a reserve team.
Does he think he’s praising us with that statement? Because, in reality, he’s missed the point by a mile simply by using such a ridiculous term. But is it lazy journalism, or does he actually believe that we fielded reserves? If it’s the latter, his thinking is as flawed as his writing.
We don’t have a reserve team in the sense he means. Yes, we have a B team, but none of those players featured yesterday. What we do have is a first-team squad packed with quality and talent.
Our supposed “reserve” side featured a £9 million striker, a £4.5 million midfielder, a Republic of Ireland international at centre-back, a former Scotland international on the wing, and a likely future Scotland cap who strolled to a man-of-the-match award. Oh, and at left-back? A player the press keeps insisting Barcelona might recall.
Is Keown trying to compliment us? I don’t think so. I think he’s genuinely clueless enough to believe those players are backups. He clearly doesn’t understand squad rotation or how modern football works. Every single one of those players is good enough to start every week—at Celtic or any other club in this league.
The fact they don’t start every week speaks volumes about the depth and success of this squad and, by extension, the work Brendan Rodgers has done. And I understand why Keown is reluctant to give Rodgers any credit—he loathes him. From the moment Rodgers returned, Keown has been picking away at him, trying to undermine him at every opportunity.
Keown was one of the hacks pushing the ludicrous narrative that Rodgers came back with something to prove. He’s the guy who labelled Rodgers’ first stint at Celtic a “failure,” as if winning seven domestic trophies—including an unbeaten treble—could ever be called that.
Keown makes me wonder if I’m sometimes too hard on Keith Jackson. Jackson is a poor writer and journalist, but at least he knows it deep down. If the Daily Record folded tomorrow, Jackson would probably end up covering indoor bowls for a regional paper. His career would always be hanging by a thread.
Keown, on the other hand, takes himself seriously. He thinks he’s a proper journalist. Yet, he’s just as bad as Jackson—just as myopic, just as prone to embarrassing outbursts. To refer to players of such obvious quality as “reserves” should be mortifying for anyone who reads his stuff, let alone those paying him. Hugh Keevins wouldn’t even have written that.
This is one of the strongest Celtic squads I’ve ever seen. When discussing the team in the pub last night, we concluded there’s only one position—left wing—where we might need reinforcements, largely because Maeda is far ahead of his backups. James Forrest can fill in there, and Yang has done so too, but neither feels like a long-term solution. Luis Palma was once the guy for that role, but he’s yet to convince most of us and the manager not at all.
And this is what Rodgers has been building towards: a squad so strong that any player can slot in without the team missing a beat. That’s not a reserve player by any stretch of the imagination. If Keown wants to see what actual reserves look like, he should glance at the Ibrox bench from today. There were plenty of examples there—players thrown in because the squad is threadbare, or worse, because the alternatives are even less appealing.
We are about 3 or 4 players off of having 2 first teams imo. This almost starts to feel like playing Fifa Career mode where you create 2 first teams & rotate game by game so the squad is always high on energy. Rodgers is having fun & we are all getting the benefits of it.
Right Back, Right Wing & Left Wing (as you say) are for me the 3 weakest positions beyond the first player on the team sheet. 4th player would be another CB as Welsh/Nawrocki is a reserve player & should probably be sold or loaned in January unless we need him for home grown requirements.
Ralston is a back up he is not first team, I don’t mean that in he is a terrible player but he will never be first choice for Celtic & that in itself means we need to look for another one.
Again on the wings, Kuhn & Maeda are miles ahead of Forrest, Yang & Palma. Yang & Forrest are at opposite ends of there careers so have to be judged in different ways but Forrest while he can still do a job for us isn’t the player of 3/4 seasons ago, & I do think there is a player in Yang who could become effective for us (I think Brendan must see something too as he is giving him chances compared to Palma) but again it is noticeable when they are playing in place of Kuhn or Maeda.
The midfield is unbelievably strong & whilst we could maybe do with a 3rd striker the fact goals come from all over the pitch kind of negates that.
Taking the next 4 fixtures we are in a position where we will put out our strongest first team on Wednesday, we then have Hibernian at home where we can rotate players to allow rest for a big big champions league game away to Zagreb. We will then have an additional days rest before the cup final where Rodgers can take stock of how everyone has performed over those 3 games & energy expelled to then select the freshest 11 for the final.
Compare that to our final opposition who will have to field by in large the same team for all 4 games & it shows even more how confident we should be going into the final.
The biggest difference I feel going forward after the actions made in the transfer window is maybe just maybe the club as a whole are all on the same page & we may actually see significant actions taken in the January window to strengthen the team. I think Kuhn is a good example of where a January signing can be good. Guarantees that player gets a full preseason & in his case excel for that season.