PAISLEY, SCOTLAND - SEPTEMBER 05: Celtic's Liam Scales celebrates as he scores to make it 1-1 during a William Hill Premiership match between St Mirren and Celtic at The Marbill Coaches Stadium, on September 05, 2026, in Paisley, Scotland. (Photo by Paul Devlin/SNS Group via Getty Images)
In the aftermath of last night’s game, Martin O’Neill heaped praise on Liam Scales. He said that after the previous match he had told Scales he did not know what the club would do without him. To me, there is a fairly obvious and fairly simple answer.
We would sign somebody better. It is not a complicated situation.
I am not going to give Scales too much of a hard time. O’Neill was right about one thing: he works his ass off, he never quits and he has, on occasion, played very well for us. But his level of inconsistency would not be tolerated in a player anywhere else on the pitch, and I do not think it would be tolerated if he was not a favourite son of certain people at the club.
That is one of the problems I have with this squad, and one of the problems I have with Martin O’Neill’s contention that we do not need to strengthen at the back.
I do not know whether there has been some kind of word from on high about this guy, but managers keep taking chances by putting their faith in him, and it is hard to believe Celtic could not do better.
One of the things which tells you something about a player is the level of interest other clubs show in taking him off your hands. I do not remember there being all that much interest where Scales is concerned.
This article is not really about him.
But when the manager makes comments like that, they require a response. Scales scored a good goal last night. He also gave away the penalty. Does one act cancel out the other?
Supporters are not stupid. They know what they are watching, and the idea that Liam Scales is somehow indispensable to Celtic is laughable. This club would do perfectly well without Liam Scales taking up a place in the squad.
In fact, without him there, people inside the club might finally be forced to take seriously the need to improve the central defence. Scales is not protected by being a domiciled player, but he seems to be protected nonetheless.
Every club needs its good soldiers. Every club needs honest professionals, guys who give everything every week without fail. We have more than a few of them.
Nobody can deny their effort.
But some of them could be better utilised by fetching a transfer fee which could then be put towards somebody better.
Every Celtic squad collects a few of these guys. Players who hang around for a long time. Players who are part of winning teams. Players who contribute. But players who nevertheless cause supporters sleepless nights beyond counting.
There are players in this team we have no choice but to play at certain times because there is no proper cover for them.
There are players in this squad we are forced to put up with because the club will not do the job in front of it and give the manager the tools to find better.
The manager sometimes gets away with that because those players are all he has to work with and he played no role in signing them. But let me say this again. Both the manager and the assistant manager were asked during the transfer window whether Celtic intended to strengthen central defence.
Both of them clearly stated that, in their view, we were already well covered there.
So, Scales is their boy. And he’s not the only one. When he and McCowan signed their new deals at the end of last season, we were told these were players any manager would be excited to work with. How fortunate that the man who said it turned out to be the next manager of the club. As he was the manager at the time he said it.
McCowan was apparently so exciting to work with that yesterday, once Celtic strengthened the squad with better-quality players, he did not make the bench. I cannot help but think that the next manager may not be all that excited either.
This is not about disliking these guy and screw anyone who says that it is. It is about standards. As I have said before, it is the presence of so many players like this in the squad, so many “good soldiers”, honest triers, which allows the board of directors to point at the team and say: you are covered in that area, you are covered in this area, you are covered in that area. That is how mediocrity gets institutionalised.
Not because the players are terrible. Because they are just good enough to make improvement feel optional.
Scales is a decent enough player at SPFL level. I do not think many of us are comfortable when he plays on the larger stage. And whilst I understand that every club needs domestic-level players, there is a sense of unreality around just how embedded some of these guys appear to be. It is not just in the playing squad either.
Celtic is full of people who could probably be replaced by somebody better. That problem does not merely affect the football team. It infects almost everything the club does.
They say a team is only as good as its weakest link. That matters because the opposition will look for that player. They will look for that weakness. They will try to exploit it every chance they get. So, it is not nothing to talk about this.
It is not nothing to think about it. It is not nothing to consider whether a player who is regarded internally as indispensable is actually one of the areas where improvement is possible. Because that stuff matters.
And I write this while thinking Scales actually had a pretty decent game last night apart from the mistake which led to the penalty. He did all right.
A few stray passes aside, and plenty of other players had those too, I would not even be writing this article if the manager had not made those comments.
That is the point. O’Neill asked a question to which there is a very simple answer.
He said: “I said to him the last game we played, I don’t know what the club would do without you.”
Well, if the scouting department knows its business at all, the answer is simple.
Improve. It really does not get any simpler than that.
And deep down, we all know it is true.
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Totally disagree, I think you’re being disrespectful to Scales and when everyone is fully fit I think he’ll be in the team probably ahead of Trusty, whom I know you love because Rodgers signed him. I’ve no problem with Trusty but apart from a few too many errant or telegraphed passes, Scales is better and will get the jersey. Not because he’s “protected” or anyone’s boy.
I worry less about Scales than I do about Sorensen. He looks like a fraud and a coward. As soon as he came on, the midfield was posted missing, same as last time. Tounekti also gives me the fear.
Cannot disagree at all. Mia
Scales is better than Trusty but frankly, neither are good enough. Sorensen had had about 40 minutes of game time, how can anyone possibly judge him on that?
Very harsh, and another dig at MON. If MON did not agree to cover this season, hell knows who we would have got as manager with this boards reputation.
Jeez! Who needs enemies?!
I like Scales and he rarely lets us down !
However I do agree…could we do better?
Of course we could …in many positions throughout our squad to ensure we can cope domestically and make progress in Europe!
Therein lies the conundrum that we debate ad nauseam.
We have a board that are happy to stockpile cash, sell our assets before replacing them and fill the gaps on the last day of every window with loan signings.
Then congratulate each other with a pat on the back, whilst taking huge salaries/bonuses and overseeing another embarrassing exit from the Premier European tournament.
Aside from another dreadful refereeing/VAR performance, last night’s 3 pts were very important.
What worries me is how easily teams can play though us and our performance last night, certainly wasn’t improved by the substitutions.
We still wait for that midfielder that can sit, protect and ensure we have some more steel in there.
We’ve been waiting a long time, haven’t we? HH
Scales is an honest trier,but that’s it.
The bigger problem is playing 3 in the midfield,we are making things easy for opposition managers to bully us there.
Ngren is a good player but is not defensive minded and we play 2 wingers with no real desire to defend.
St Mirren were coming back into the game so we took of Baur and Hassan and put on a player who has 40 minutes bame time and Tounekti.
Surely we could have changed the system to 4-4-2 and solidified the midfield.
Also we had 4 Centre Half’s across the back four.
Strength in depth.
Spot on Steve. The midfield 3 needs to stop, i know that sounds ridiculous when we are winning games but we’ve seen how teams with genuinely quality run right through the middle of us unchecked. If you’re going 3 in the middle you need players with pace and perfect positional awareness. We don’t have that. Putting 2 up front would force teams to retreat a bit more and take a lot of pressure off the middle of the park. As for Scales, I prefer him to Trusty and much prefer him to Murray. Could we do better? Probably. But could we do better than Tounekti, McCowan, Murray, Ralston, Chelsea development players, Johnstone and freebies from Feyenoord? Definitely. But we need to support the players we have, constantly criticising them wont help them improve. Yang is a perfect example, for years ove dreaded seeing him on the team sheet. Now after his last couple of performances I’m dreading being without him for the derbies. Never thought id say that but things in football can change very quickly.
Agree with the comments regarding our M/F, our central defenders are adequate for the SPFL, and are not the big problem The real problem at the moment is playing 4 3 3 with Nygren as part of the M/F 3. To me Nygren is a strike partner or attacking midfielder in a 4 4 2 system, he is not a midfielder in a M/F 3, and loses possession too easily, leaving us wide open to the counter attack. Go to Ibrox with the same M/F 3 and Tounekti and Hasseem as our wide players, will leave us very easy to play through and our two F/B’s isolated in 1 v 1 situations. McInnes took advantage of a weak and exposed Celtic defence against Hearts at Tynecastle last October which resulted in a 3-1 defeat, I hope we don’t turn up at Ibrox with a weak M/F, and an exposed back 4 at Ibrox
Our League and League Cup games have shown us how easy we are to play through, luckily for us the calibre of strikers in the SPFL hasn’t been good enough to really punish us, but Lask did and we’re still playing the same M/F 3.
A while back I never thought I’d be saying this, but Yang is going to be a big miss for his skill, speed and workrate.
James you seem to be now starting a vendetta against MON, whilst hanging onto his every word, get a grip. Positivity is part of Football Psychology, that O’Neill has always used, and that is what he was obviously using in the comment about Scales.
Agree with most of your comments, especially your concerns about the games against Sevco. I was quietly thinking the very same thing last night.
Last night’s victory was very satisfying against a side who put us under a lot of pressure in the latter stages. St Mirren had the bit between their teeth, but we stood up well to their late efforts. As regards Scales and Trusty, they are both just okay, slightly above average, but we could certainly do better than them if the recruitment team had tried a bit harder to replace them. 5 straight victories in the League is a brilliant start to the season, catch us if you can and mind the gap.
Aye, Johnny, it’s a good start to the season. Last nights game was always going to be a potential stumbling block. We eventually negotiated that hurdle with a couple of good goals and our undefeated record still in order. No thanks to the officials. We need to change and tighten-up things for the games against Sevco, especially the league game.
WTF was Scales thinking last night? It was even worse seeing it in slow motion. If i didn’t know any better i’d of swore he was deliberately trying to throw the game. And he then went and lied to his teammates about it. In the aftermath, as the VAR instructed the rank rotten ref, Scales was telling his teammates that his arm was tucked into his chest. No it feckin’ wasn’t. The world seen he had his arms behind his back and then, before the ball reached him, he pulled them out and raised his left arm to stop the ball. I thought the 2 St.Mirren players who were offside at the time would have saved Scales from his blunder but apparently not. I have to say though, he did slightly redeem himself with a cracker of a goal. Please, Celtic, can we have more attacking the ball like that at set-pieces?
Yes , of course he was deliberately was trying to throw the game, FFS he scored the equaliser.
Scales is a managers dream as he gives his all. He is being played at LB so let’s not forget that. He is an excellent defender of the box when he doesn’t have time to think but when he has he comes across as indecisive. BTW he is always available and rarely injured. Compare that with CCV and AJ.
All that said we could do better in fact we need to if we want to progress and we would get a very tidy sum for him
James, Celtic are far from perfect as any serious supporter knows and we all know what the problems are ,but in the last few days you’ve had a right go at Cowan, Mc Neill and now Scales is getting it big time, it’s only my opinion but on current form he’s better than Trusty or CCV also your “screw anyone that says it is” comment is like one that you’d read on Ibrox noise or another of that mobs shite sites, it would appear that Celtic bring you more pain than pleasure at the moment maybe it’s time to step away for a while and rediscover what attracted you to the club in the first place, you are right about a lot of the wrongs you’ve pointed out recently but slating the manager and players on here has a right bang of hun off it.