Risky business: Is a tactical change more dangerous for Celtic than sticking with what we do?

One of the things I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days—and especially after yesterday, when all of us to one degree or another were saying the same thing about the team and the system—is that we’ve essentially been playing a variation of the 4-2-3-1 for well over a decade now.

The 4-2-3-1 single striker system was introduced at this club by Ronny Deila. At the time, it was the in-vogue formation across European football. Almost every major club at the elite level of the game was using it or a variation of it.

Some people have given that formation different names. There are even those who don’t call it a 4-2-3-1 at all, but a 4-3-3. And in some ways, it is a 4-3-3. But it’s not a traditional one. If you look at the way the team lines up, it’s very much a 4-2-3-1. And at Celtic Park, we’ve used it across the spells of Ronny, Lennon, Rodgers, Lennon again, Ange, and now Brendan again.

In that time, almost every one of us has bemoaned the absence of certain types of players in the squad. Every one of us has decried the refusal to play two up front—although when this system works at its best, it can resemble a 4-3-3 with three attacking players across the front. This season, in particular, when it started and we had Maeda on the left and Nicolas Kühn on the right, playing as inside forwards, scoring goals regularly, it looked like that.

But at its heart, it’s not a 4-3-3. And we all know it.

For the same length of time, we’ve all been calling out for a ball-winning, hard-tackling midfield general. Again, this has never materialised. So, there are things we’ve not done and don’t seem to want to do. And although there’s been a lot of success during that time, I think in some ways we’ve become imprisoned by it. Because it’s almost as if there’s a fear of changing it and getting it wrong.

I’m not necessarily criticising that.

It is an obvious fact that we’ve been winning things for that whole period. As I said in the previous piece, maybe we’ve become prisoners of our own success. After all, if a manager comes in—or a manager already here decides to change the tactics in a dramatic fashion—and we start dropping points and stop winning trophies with the regularity we’ve enjoyed, then who gets blamed for that? The coach. Because he butted heads with one of the most fundamental precepts there is: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Things were different at Rodgers’ other clubs.

If you look at his past, you’ll see that he’s been an ever-changing manager. Rodgers would change the tactics completely depending on who the opposition was, and he did that frequently—even up to his time at Leicester.

I looked over some of the tactical analysis of his time there earlier today, and I can tell you that he played about six different formations. He played variations of the system we use now: the 4-2-3-1 and the 4-3-3.

But he also used the 4-3-2-1, and the 4-1-4-1. He played five at the back with a packed midfield, and several times he went with three at the back and two strikers—a formation very similar to the one Martin O’Neill used at Parkhead.

At all of his clubs, he’s played a 4-4-2 regularly.

He even experimented with a 4-4-2 at Celtic, with one game in particular allowing Callum McGregor to play further up the pitch—and it was rewarded with a goal. At Liverpool, one of his best sides played a 4-4-2 diamond midfield, a variation which eliminates the need for natural wingers and depends on full backs. Rodgers is not as willing to change Celtic’s style as he’s been at other clubs.

And yes, one of the reasons he’s been reluctant to do it is that this system works for us. The 4-2-3-1 works well. It pays dividends. We score a lot of goals. We create a lot of chances. But—and this is the tough part—it’s been used so often now that it’s become routine. It’s become predictable. And teams know how to counter it. We play these sides four times a season. If they haven’t figured this out by now, I’d be worried about their managers and what goes on in their heads.

We’ve all been worried for a couple of months. Let’s be honest about that. Our away form has collapsed in that time. A lot of these teams know that if they press us high up the pitch, we tend not to cope with it well. That’s because our midfield is made up mainly of attack-minded players instead of hard-as-nails ball-winners and warriors. Sometimes you need those in the team.

Where this became a much more serious matter than we’ve been treating it is in the recent run of results: the loss at Motherwell—although we should have got something out of that game and were denied it by a terrible officiating decision—the loss at Celtic Park to the club from Ibrox, managed by a tabloid journalist and failed Clyde manager. And now this latest defeat, where we were absolutely abysmal.

That’s a newly-minted coach, a hack who shouldn’t be near a dugout, and the guy managing the bottom club in the league—and all of them have figured us out to one extent or another. Is it possible that playing virtually the same system for 10-plus years across multiple managers is starting to have a negative impact?

And if you’re asking yourself that, here’s the real kicker: what’s riskier going forward? Changing the system to something the players will have to relearn? Or continuing with the one which looks very much like other clubs have already cracked?

Because our future might hinge on the answer to that question.