Is the Celtic management team doing enough to fix this mess we’re in?

Yesterday, I mentioned Liam Scales in my article about Celtic’s playing system. He sums up one of the things we’re doing wrong. Let’s look at another of the players who encapsulates where exactly we are now; Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

He is one of the most wasted signings this club has made in years, and not because he has suddenly become a bad footballer. He has not. What has happened is that we have dropped him into a system that strips away everything he is good at, and this is especially true in a Celtic context.

His game has always been built on dynamism, on movement, on driving forward with the ball and committing defenders. He thrives on energy, on breaking lines, on forcing the opposition to react to him. That is the player we signed. And yet, what we have turned him into is something completely different.

He stands around the edge of the box, waiting until he receives the ball in static positions. He passes it sideways or takes low-percentage shots into a crowded area. There is no rhythm to what he does because there is no rhythm to what we do as a team at Celtic.

That is not a player losing his ability. That is a player being used badly.

And it speaks to a bigger issue that runs through the entire side.

When you play the way that we are playing right now, you are relying on one of two things. You are either waiting for the opposition to make a mistake, or you are hoping that one of your players produces a moment of magic. The problem is that our players are not producing those moments with any consistency, and the opposition do not need to do anything special to defend against us.

They simply have to stay organised. We make it easy for them.

That is why it is so frustrating to hear the manager talk last night as if he has tried everything, as if this is simply a case of the breaks not going for us or the execution not being quite right. That is not what we are watching. We are watching a team that is very effective at doing the wrong thing. Moreover, this is something that Celtic fans have seen too often.

Seventy-five percent possession proves that. We keep the ball, but we do nothing of value with it. That is not control, not dominance. That is a team going through the motions without any real cutting edge. And this is not new.

No shots on target at Ibrox last weekend. One shot on target at St Mirren earlier in the season, won by Callum McGregor’s late howitzer. Late goals. Moments that bailed us out. Performances we papered over with results rather than justified with them.

We have been getting away with it. Now we are not.

There are seven games left, and we must win all of them just to have a chance. Not to win the title, just to stay in the race. Yesterday, before the game, I said my confidence came from us having it in our hands. Now, it no longer does.

Playing like this, with this system, any chance we have is effectively zero. Every team in this league can hurt us if we show up and play in the same slow, predictable way.

I do not know whether this is coaching or whether there are people at the club who genuinely believe this style has merit. What I do know is that watching us take the ball from the opposition half and recycle it all the way back to the goalkeeper, not under pressure but by choice, tells you everything.

That is not game management. That is dysfunction.

And it is the manager’s job to fix it.

If he wants to turn this around, even now, there are things he can do. They are not complicated nor revolutionary. They are basic corrections to a system that has gone too far in the wrong direction.

Start by setting a standard. Call out players who default to endless sideways and backwards passing. Do it openly, not quietly or internally, as part of a clear shift in how we play. Do not accept possession without purpose. If that means public criticism, then maybe a little of it is needed. I’d prefer he dropped them.

Then look at how he is using players.

Play Oxlade-Chamberlain every week, but give him clear instructions consistent with what he made his name and reputation on. Do not stand still. Do not wait for the game to come to you. Move forward, anticipate, run beyond the ball. When he receives it, let him carry it. Let him do what we all thought he was brought in to do.

The same applies to the wide players. We have scored a huge proportion of our goals in recent years from players who start wide but do not stay there. They come inside, they attack the box, they take shots, they create problems. That is what made players like Maeda so effective. Right now, we are not doing that consistently enough.

Instead, we are predictable. Structured to the point of being easy to defend against. Rigid. Look at the moments where we did click; crisp passes, movement off the ball, players opening up space by running and making defenders move with them.

For long stretches of the game there was none of that. And then we wonder why nothing opens up for us.

Listening to O’Neill after the game, it sounded like he believed we were close. That we were doing the right things and just needed a bit more sharpness. That is not the reality. The thing we are doing is the problem, and until that changes, nothing else will. Above all, Celtic must change approach to achieve better results.

There were concerns that O’Neill’s legacy might be damaged by the situation he walked into. Right now, the way he insists on playing the game is shaping it. And Shaun Maloney, who has emerged as a credible figure in the background, will not escape that either if this collapses completely.

These are not passive observers. They are the only people who can fix this, and they deserve every bit of criticism they are getting, because the responsibility sits with them. Not just for the results, but for the way they are producing those results.

If they cannot see that, or if they refuse to act on it, then there is no fixing this, and we may as well start preparing ourselves for what comes next. In fact, Celtic needs decisive leadership now.

But make the right changes, the right tweaks, starting with freeing up one of our best footballers to play his natural game, and cease this dire fetishisation of possession for its own sake, and we still have a sliver of a chance.

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