DUNDEE, SCOTLAND - APRIL 05: Celtic's Kelechi Iheanacho celebrates after scoring to make it 2-1 during a William Hill Premiership match between Dundee and Celtic at Dens Park, on April 05, in Dundee, Scotland. (Photo by Paul Devlin/SNS Group via Getty Images)
Well, that was not a statement victory, and I thought we needed a statement victory today. Watching that, I’m not seeing a title-winning Celtic team. In addition, I’m not seeing a side that looks as though it has six wins in its last six league games.
I keep telling myself that maybe six wins won’t be what it takes, because Hearts are not a good side. The Ibrox club are not a good side, and perhaps all we need to do over the next six matches is be ten per cent better than those two. Maybe that will be enough. Maybe.
I hated almost every minute of that today. I hated the poverty of our strike force, which looks every bit like a forward line assembled out of spare parts and freebies. If you’re going to win titles, if you’re going to go on a title-winning run and beat the best teams in the league after the split, you are hoping for something far better than this.
I watched the Hearts game before it, and Shankland got one and Braga got one. Everyone knows I don’t think that Hearts team is particularly good. Everyone knows I wouldn’t sign their players. But both of those guys would walk into this Celtic team right now and improve it immeasurably. There is no question about that at all. I cannot think of a broader or greater indictment of this squad than that.
What frustrates me most with what we’ve got left is this. There are four home games to go in the league, and every single one will now turn into a festival of support for the team. They need it, of course, but the people in those boardroom seats, the people in the directors’ box, will get the free ride they need to get through this season. Once they get through it, they will think they will never hear songs of protest aimed at them again.
If those people are still at Celtic Park when this campaign ends, then we have failed in our most fundamental responsibility, which is to stop them taking us into another summer. It cannot happen. It must not happen. But it will happen.
And I’m as resigned to that now as I am to the possibility of seeing some other club win this title. Complacency runs through Celtic.
I’m pleased we got the three points today. I’m pleased we’re still in this title race and that we closed the gap on Hearts, because Hearts were the side on top. They had a sufficient lead over us that the title race was not in our hands.
It’s in our hands again. If we can beat the Ibrox club at home and the Tynecastle club at home, then one of them, or both of them, are going to drop points against each other. The advantage that hands us could be massive.
But Paulina got it absolutely right earlier this morning.
This would be the most dangerous title win in our recent history, because people already think everything will be fixed in the summer. I don’t think everything will be fixed in the summer.
I look at the way we play and at the make-up of the squad and at the scale of the work that needs done. More than that, I look at the people responsible for doing it, and I have no faith in them at all. I would have more faith if none of those people were still at the club. However, they will be.
Martin O’Neill should get the job he so obviously craves, as head of football operations or whatever other grand title you want to call it. It amounts to the same job. But I am very glad he will not coach the team.
I said there was an argument for Martin getting the job for one more year if he led us to the title. That won’t happen now. It should not happen. He made too many mistakes today in the team selection and in the substitutions.
Like-for-like changes are soul-destroying to watch when your side cannot afford to slip up in a title race. That is not a manager stretching every sinew. Some would say he looks more like a manager going through the motions. It’s time we stop sparing people the judgments we know are necessary.
Martin will get us through these six league games and, with any luck, two cup ties. Then he will depart, and a lot of people will say it was a heroic effort.
Fair enough. He is working with one of the worst Celtic squads many of us have ever seen. We got through today. We played with a little more tempo, a little more movement, and a little more aggression. That is why we got the three points.
But the like-for-like changes, the insistence on the same shape, the lack of boldness, we are not learning quickly enough and we are not changing well enough for me to believe that we are going to win this. We were eight minutes away today from this being over. In fact, nobody would have been surprised if it had been.
When they scored the penalty, I said to my friends that we had got what we deserved. Thirty minutes later, I was happier, but still not confident.
We got the answer to one question today, and it was an answer that did not surprise me. The best striker at the club is Kelechi Iheanacho. Without question.
His goal today had everything our other strikers lack. He was composed, calm and clinical. That is experience at the highest level of the game. That is exactly why Rodgers brought him in on a free, and one of the decisions for which he was pilloried.
Even stripped to the bare bones, Rodgers still knew that was a player who could improve the team. His injury record is dreadful. His fitness is questionable. But his talent never has been. If we can keep him fit, then that is our starting striker until the end of the campaign. That may be the best hope we have of winning this.
That, and the fact that neither of our rivals is particularly good.
You can see points being dropped by all three teams as we head for the finish, and none of us has any real idea how this is going to go. I don’t see reasons to be confident, but as long as we’re in it, we have a chance. We needed a win today to stay in it, and Livingston did us a big favour against Hearts, so it has been a decent weekend. The side we most needed to see drop points did so. We capitalised.
But other than our big Nigerian’s winner, and the fact that we didn’t spend so much of the match passing the ball backwards, it was another afternoon that, when this season is over, we will all mercifully be able to forget.
Because this is not pretty to watch. It is not pretty to watch a striker go through one on one several times and fail to finish. It is not pretty to watch a team chasing victory make like-for-like substitutions in a game that is already bogging down. The lack of imagination and daring in the coaching staff is as worrying as anything else we are seeing.
And yet, as we’ve said on this blog so many times now, we are still in the race. We are still alive. Believe it or not, that affects the clubs around us, because as long as Celtic are still alive, we are dangerous.
As long as it is mathematically possible, it remains a real possibility, not in some abstract sense, but in the only sense that matters.
I wish I believed in it more.
I wish I believed this was going to be one of those years when we make the miracle happen, and maybe it still will be, in spite of ourselves and in spite of the performances. But today I wanted to see more.
We got the three points, and that will do. Of course it will do. But there’s a difference between expecting fillet mignon and being served a doner kebab. You’re not going to turn it down, but you can’t help feeling disappointed.
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Ill be honest, I haven’t read the article by jaysus christ we are dire. I haven’t seen a Celtic team this bad since the early 90s
They are so easily bullied off the ball, never get the loose breaking ball and are so slow, predictable and pedestrian all the time. No one ever shows for a throw so it goes back to the keeper, no matter where we are on the pitch.
This playing the ball across and back the park then back to the keeper every fucking time- who the fuck has coached that SHITE into them.
And the keeper gives it to scales, back to the keeper back to scales – repeat til they are beside each other then the ball is lost and we are under more pressure.
Dont get me started of the fucking tippy tappy pish around the opposite box trying to walk the fucking ball into the goal.
Its fucking TEDIOUS and I am so bored of this pish.
We were lucky to win that match today and hearts and the scum will blow us away if we keep playing that SHITE.
Desmond must see what he has done to the club and the team over the last few seasons. Fuck sake man sell up and let someone proper have a go. We need fresh ideas the whole way thru the club
I don’t believe for a minute James that you were expecting Fillet Mignon or anywhere close to it, for we were served up, as usual, the very ordinary fare that we have come to expect. Despite that though, I still had a smile on my face, and had hope in my heart that we can still do the Double, not because we deserve it, but because if we do we will have been the best of a bad lot, and right now, given all of our trials and tribulations so far this season, I will be delighted with that outcome. We are going into the last game of the split with what I perceive as the easiest of the three games left that matter. St Mirren will be no pushovers, but I am glad we are playing them and not Falkirk away or Motherwell at home like the other two are. Those three games could change the picture once again depending on how they pan out and give Celtic an even better advantage going into the last 5.
Negativity is counter productive and I am therefore happyish with the way things are just now, so let us all put the other concerns on the back burner until the final whistle blows on the final day, and try not to dwell on the aftermath just yet.
I want him to do well like o obviously do will all signings but cvancara isnt right for us he looked scared of the ball like it was going ro bite him. I cant even remember the names of the other forwards we signed in January..
Sarrachi was mipes more positive than KT when he came on- could be play right back until AJ or the mad Mexican comes back, which i really hope he does.
I said to my pals that abiut 9 or 10 of the 16 who played today need moved on but who the hell will take them.
Its a dire situation
We’re so Ordinary it’s painful to watch at times, 1st 20 mins I thought this is looking better, Maeda looked sharp, Oxlade Chamberlain was pinging the ball around, then the bad habits crept back in.
Passes went astray , safe passes became the norm, the ball ciculated around the M/F and then back to Scales, Trusty and Sinasola. Cvancara proved he isn’t a natural striker and made me think fondly of Johnny Kenny.
I watched the Hearts game and they were no better, take Braga and Shankland out of that team and they have nothing, The Ibrox mob are very ordinary, but in a season like this could win the Title, gift wrapped with best wishes from the people in charge at Celtic Park. Who’s scouting dept and money hoarding has brought the quality of our team down to the level of an English League One team at best.
Beat St Mirren on Saturday, Get a few of our injured players back for after the split and wrap Iheanacho in cotton wool, and you never know we might stagger over the line with the Title or even a Double. Can’t see it myself, but as Greavsie said, “It’s a funny ould game” and we’re still standing.
I’ll take the win but it certainly wasn’t convincing !
I think you’re being overly critical James, we know what we’ve watched all season but for the first half it was better. The Ox was excellent, both wingers looked lively and Cvancara was heavily involved. If we’d got the 2nd soon after the first we might’ve got the statement win. But we missed big chances, MON was clearly annoyed about that. As for the like for like subs, McCowan to Sarracchi to Iheanacho wins us the game. Again the conditions obviously played a factor but overall it’s a good win and we’re three points off the top, next week I wouldn’t bet on our 2 rivals getting wins so if we beat St Mirren, things will look better still.
We won’t win anything this season in my opinion, I hope I’m wrong but I can’t see it. If Cvancara scores that one on one just at the start of the second half then with chances created up to that point we could’ve been 6-0 up at that point but we weren’t and Donovan’s handball could’ve had us out of the title race. It was a stonewall penalty although I’ve seen it claimed in some quarters as harsh but the truth is it was a penalty all day long. As you rightly say James this is one of the poorest Celtic sides I’ve seen in my sixty one years on the planet, it’s, not the worst but it’s up there. The players have a lot of responsibility for the state we’re in too and I know it’s managed decline and negligence from the board because they’ve asset stripped the team to the bare bones but these players should have some professional pride about them which I’m struggling to see. Martin, Shaun and Fozzy have done well to get us back into it twice but we look powder puff at times, as soon as a team score against us we look liable to fold like a deckchair, although they’ve went on and won games in certain situations it won’t be enough for us to win the title. I agree with you about Hearts and the Ibrox club being piss poor but we’re helping them to look better than they are and although we play both at home I don’t think we’ll beat either of them if we keep playing the way we are, we should go 4-4-2 the last six games and see if it makes any difference because what we’re doing now isn’t working. If by some miracle we won a double this board would have the brass neck to ask what all the fuss is about? They can’t be allowed to get away with the litany of criminal decisions they’ve made it’s pure luck that Rangers died in 2012 and had to start again from the bottom tier which meant that for five years we had no serious challenger(s) to our dominance, in fact there’s an argument to be made that we underachieved and should’ve won more trebles than we did. I’ve been saying to friends and family that we’ve needed a root and branch clear out since about 2007 because of the failures in Europe and the total lack of ambition shown by this board and I’m surprised it’s taken this long for things to come to a head. Can you tell us James what the result of the Celtic Collective meeting held this passed midweek came up with because I’ve heard nothing about next steps are? We need the Desmond’s out that’s the only way that things will improve in my opinion.