DUNDEE, SCOTLAND - MARCH 22: Celtic's Kieran Tierney looks dejected at full time during a William Hill Premiership match between Dundee United and Celtic at the CalForth Construction Arena at Tannadice, on March 22, 2026, in Dundee, Scotland. (Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Celtic fans, we’ve had a tough week. Let’s be honest about it. We thought we’d be heading into the international break in a good place, with the title race wide open and the advantage still in our hands.
Instead, we’ve come out of last weekend in a horrible state, with no real enthusiasm for watching the team. When we return in seven days’ time away to Dundee, that game now carries huge consequence.
An international break is not an easy time for a club to recalibrate.
A lot of players are away on international duty, which makes it difficult to get everyone together, analyse what has gone wrong and start putting it right. Nevertheless, that is exactly the situation this club finds itself in, and it is exactly what it must spend the remainder of this break trying to address.
Let’s not beat around the bush. The way we are playing right now will not win us the title. If we are going to win it, we need to restructure our playing style, raise the tempo and restore the fear factor.
If we fail to do that, we will not win anything. It is not just the league title that will slip through our fingers; the Scottish Cup will almost certainly follow. This whole situation is a mess, and the only way out of it is to rip it up and start again.
There is an old theory in American sports that the hardest task in professional sport falls to the manager whose team trails at half-time in the Super Bowl. In that short window, he must rethink the entire strategy that got him there in the first place.
That is where we are now. The difference is that we are not at half-time in a single game. We are staring down seven of the toughest league fixtures we have faced in years, and we probably need to win them all. Even then, it might not be enough.
There is no room for complacency now. One bad result effectively ends the campaign. It might not be mathematical, but it would feel as final as a cell door slamming shut. The people who are well paid to fix this, to solve these problems and to identify what needs to change, must already have a clear plan. When this team plays with tempo, it is hard to beat. The question is no longer whether we have the players to do that. There is no “can’t” anymore. We either find a way, or it’s over.
There is a well-known tale about a group of Irish boys who came to a wall they thought they could not climb. They took off their caps and threw them over the wall, forcing themselves to find a way. That is the mindset we need now.
That is what the manager must spend the next seven days instilling.
Every day has to count. He must push these players to do things they have not done all season, to find a level they have not reached, to rediscover a rhythm that has eluded us not just this campaign but across the last year.
There are still elements in this team that make us contenders. The determination. The resilience. The mentality. The pride in being champions, as Auston Trusty said when he made it clear that anyone who wants this title will have to take it from us. That pride now has to fuse into something that works, something that delivers results and carries us over the line.
I am not optimistic and I will be honest about that.
I do not know if we can do it, and based on what we have seen this season, there is little evidence to suggest that we can. But I do know this; just as the body sends signals of fatigue long before it reaches actual exhaustion, I think we’ve got more in the gas tank.
But this team will have to dig deeper than it ever has before.
The odds are stacked against us. The mainstream media does not believe we can do it. Our rivals probably don’t believe it either. That might be the one advantage we have left. Underestimation can be dangerous, and for all our flaws, we are still the wrong club to underestimate. We are still the wrong team to write off.
This international break feels different. It has not carried the usual sense of anticipation. The spark is missing. Watching this team no longer brings the same enjoyment, and the future does not feel as full of promise as it usually does. Much of Scottish football looks at us now and expects us to fail.
What happens next is entirely in the hands of the manager, the coaches and the players. They have to prove everyone wrong. That starts with a dramatic shift in how we approach these final games. If the last week has not been spent working on that, and if the next one is not devoted to it completely, then this season will end exactly as everyone outside Celtic hopes it will.
It is a huge responsibility, but that is why they are here. That is what they are paid for. They are still the best-paid group in the country.
It is time they proved they are still the best team in it.
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Our display last week wad really disappointing, On reflection I wonder if MON and Maloney made the wrong call by playing two inexperienced guys on the right side of our defence in Donovan and Arthur, and then compounded it by replacing Donovan with Hatate at R/B. Trusty and Ralston were available and both have a lot more experience. I know that Ralston is maybe limited against top European players but he has plenty of experience in the SPFL. It was no coincidence that both goals came from gaps at the right side of our defence.
Although to be quite honest we’re short in so many position and the glaring one is not having an out and out striker.
Ach let’s face it it would take a miracle for us to win the Title, maybe singing a few Hail Hails, and a verse of Grace will do the trick.
James, I was expecting the determination, the resilience and the mentality, that you speak of, last week against the Arabs, but what we got was a totally gutless performance instead. Personally now after that let down, the present squad do not inspire me in any way into any positive thinking, like them I have given up the ghost this season. We are still in the race, but we are handicapped by our own lack of urgency, there are too many players just going through the motions. I am now looking beyond this season to the following one and even then with severe doubts about everything concerned. I’m afraid my normal optimism has been shot to pieces.
Our Scummy Board will instruct Martin to blame the injuries when Sevco win the league !
I just wonder if that ship has sailed? Was last week the moment that MON’s just win mentality despite our lack of quality hit its glass ceiling? Or will those few Irish guys still at the club throw their caps over the wall and pursue them, and persuade the other multiple nationalities to do likewise?
I won’t be that surprised either way.
It’s time to change our formation and go 3-5-2 and really boss the midfield and have two central strikers – Iheanacho/Cvancara with Maeda/Osmand and go for goals. Raise the tempo and use our bench to keep the pressure on the opposition. And no sacred cows – if McGregor can’t/won’t play to the tempo required then bench him. Attack, attack, attack!
I’d tend to agree with 3-5-2 Porto and I’ve already said that in an earlier post.
We have been, in the main, absolutely dreadful all season and are where we are!
We have seven league games remaining and realistically, have to win them all, which as you say James, might still be insufficient.
We can still do this but as most have commented, it’s extremely difficult to muster up much optimism.
If we are to fail, let’s at least go down with a fight and giving it everything, rather than the sh*te we’ve had to witness for the majority of this season !
Over to MON & players ! HH
Can we win our remaining games? Of course we can but this season has shown it’s very unlikely. If we can look good even for 2 games in a row then we’ll see the pressure have an effect on Hearts and the media darlings sevco. I’m not at all confident we can win the league, I just hope we give it our best from here on, fatigue isn’t an issue anymore, it’s about mentality
There are distinct similarities to the run-in of 2007/08 when losing at ibrox and at home to Motherwell at this exact stage of the season left us absolutely no wriggle room and we had to win all the remaining games – which we did. Could we do that this time? Anything is possible but although a lot of credit in 2007/08 correctly went to Hartley and Robson for bossing the midfield in a way Broony couldn’t do at that stage, Strachan still had forwards who could score goals at his disposal, and that’s what this threadbare squad lacks – goalscorers. Unless we start scoring some goals it’s not going to happen. I thought that finally getting a week with no match on the Wednesday or Thursday would rejuvenate the team – then Tannadice happened, leaving us all despondent. But if a week is a long time in politics, a fortnight can be an aeon in fitba’…… the future is still unwritten and this patched-up squad has before them the opportunity to make unlikely legends of themselves. However unlikely it might have seemed the past week, they can still do it.
A poster says the team are going through the motions, frankly? Am going through them as well!!. We have no goals in this team, zilch, nada.
And if the fix is in at the split then forget it its done and put a fork in it jerry.