Last night Benjamin Nygren scored for Sweden and proved once again that Celtic have a very good footballer on our hands. And once again, it was frustrating to watch him do so well for his national team while remaining one of the most divisive players in a Celtic shirt.
I have made my own feelings on Nygren pretty clear. He is a very fine footballer. He is a very good goalscorer. But I increasingly wonder whether we are ever going to see the best of him at Celtic, because that is the real question now.
Is he suited to this squad?
Can we find a way to play him in this team?
Or are we going to remain permanently frustrated by a player who can be extraordinarily effective in the right role but, when used in the wrong one, can leave Celtic looking almost like a team with a man missing?
There are questions about our style of play, of course. We have all asked them and discussed them, and we know those questions are echoed inside the club itself. Coaches are asking them. Players are asking them. There is clearly no settled agreement yet on how this team should be playing.
I know Martin O’Neill wants to play with two strikers, but I also know that some of the coaching staff are unconvinced that this squad has the personnel to do it properly.
And this is where Nygren becomes such a problem.
At this moment, it is difficult to see a midfield combination involving Nygren if Celtic are going to play with only two central midfielders. Put him alongside Callum McGregor and the two can end up so far apart that an enormous space opens in the middle of the pitch where the defensive cover is supposed to be.
If McGregor pushes forward to support him, then the hole appears behind them instead.
Either way, good teams will exploit it.
Celtic simply do not have the personnel to play a conventional 4-4-2 safely, certainly not with Nygren as one of the two central midfielders. You could switch to a 3-5-2, and that would potentially free him to operate in a more advanced role, but even that system would require proper protection behind him.
Ideally, you would want two midfielders capable of holding their positions and doing the ugly work.
Celtic do not have two.
So once again, it comes back to personnel.
I understand O’Neill wanting his best footballers on the pitch. Every manager does. But we have already discussed how that becomes almost functionally impossible with this Celtic squad unless you choose a formation so open and a style of football so risky that virtually every decent opponent will be able to exploit it.
Somebody is always going to miss out.
Against the Ibrox club at Celtic Park, for part of the match that somebody was Nygren. The frustration is that when you give him freedom and allow him to operate where his instincts naturally take him, he can be extraordinarily effective.
We saw it at the start of the season. He scored goals and created them. We saw the same thing last season. He has repeatedly demonstrated that there is end product in his game.
Yet he has remained a source of frustration for supporters and, apparently, for coaches too because of what happens when Celtic do not have the ball. His defensive work, his positioning and his willingness to track runners have all been questioned.
That creates the dilemma.
Nygren is one of the players you most want near the opposition penalty box.
But getting him there safely requires a midfield Celtic currently does not possess.
We can complain about the summer window. We can talk about what should happen in January. We can speculate about another restructuring of the squad when the market opens again.
None of that helps us now.
These are the problems Celtic have to live with for the next two months, perhaps a dozen matches, and they will not disappear because we wish they would.
The simple fact is that Nygren, as talented as he is, does not fit neatly into a Celtic team where central midfield is already painfully weak.
And the returning international players only add another layer to the problem.
If Yang comes back fit and Husein comes back fit, there are then decisions to make around Kasper Høgh and Camilo Duran too. Celtic cannot simply put every attacking player on the pitch and hope that the numbers somehow work.
If O’Neill is determined to use Høgh and Duran together, then something has to give elsewhere. If Duran is used from the right, somebody else loses his place. Nygren’s position becomes vulnerable almost regardless of which combination is selected.
There is no easy answer to the Benjamin Nygren question because there is no easy answer to the wider problem with this squad.
Under normal circumstances, you would trust the coaching staff to work it out.
But the coaching staff itself does not appear united on the best way forward. The manager has publicly sounded like a man questioning whether he can still do the job, and all of this is happening while Celtic are trying to work out how best to accommodate one of the most technically gifted and dangerous players in the squad.
Nygren scores goals. He creates chances. He plays regularly for his country and produces there.
Put him in the right system, with the right balance around him, and he can hurt teams.
But Celtic do not currently have that balance.
The midfield is too weak to carry passengers defensively. The coaching staff are not convinced by some of the options available to them. There is no obvious combination which solves everything.
Yet Celtic have to find something which functions.
And because Nygren is one of our most potent attacking weapons, the optimal solution surely has to involve finding a way to make the team work with him in it rather than continually sacrificing what he does well because the squad around him is badly constructed.
That is why I do not think Benjamin Nygren is really Celtic’s problem.
He is the player who exposes the problem most clearly.
He has qualities we should be desperate to use.
What Celtic lacks is the structure which allows us to use them.
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Again we can trace this back to not having DOF or Recruitment Department. The most recently signed players were not signed using any form of data analytics, therefore they were not targeted for a profile that suits fitting into the Celtic system.
Nygren would ideally play as a No 10 just behind one centre forward, but Celtic have splashed the cash for two high quality centre forwards. Any winger Celtic signs needs to be able to track back and put tackles in. Hussein doesn’t do either of those. A physical defensive midfielder was needed to dovetail with Callum McGregor, yet two unphysical players were brought in, Baur and Sorenson.
Look how quickly Pocognnoli has sussed out that he needs two different profiles in centre mid in Ferguson and Gilmour, and how quickly he tweaked things at half-time to make his 3-4-3 system work. This was despite the fact the players had never played together as a team.
In comparison Celtic are just shoehorning signings who were not properly identified regarding their profiles, into either the hybrid 4-3-3, or the recent tweaks to that system. Strangely enough, 3-4-3 might suit the current Celtic squad, as Nygren could then play the No. 10 role behind Hogh and Duran, in a similar way that McGinn played behind McBurnie and Ure for Scotland.
Why did we re-sign the Ox? When and where did we imagine him in the team?
Nygren has some world class players around him in the Swedish squad that play for Liverpool, Arsenal etc…this surely helps him but yes he does look far better with Sweden.
Nygren is lazy and selfish, the epitome of someone in their own movie. He can’t tackle, refuses to track runners, and passes short regularly. Players who refuse to work as part of a collective drag everyone down, he doesn’t frustrate me he actually annoyes me. Why should everyone else have to work harder to accommodate him? He isn’t that spectacular!
Just how many players in recent 3 seasons have left celtic as poor only to see them thrive ?
I would like to see what van den Berg has to offer us – primarily a defensive midfielder, 6’2” and at 19 should have the legs and energy to cover the ground. In a 3-5-2 you could have Nygren/Baur playing in front of any two of McGregor/AOC/Berg (using subs like Ange did to maintain energy levels) as your central 3 midfielders. Wingbacks – take your choice of Johnstone, Yang, Hassann, Jota, Lotomba, Donovan.
Perm any two from four of Hogh, Duran, Osmand and Mheuka up front.
We have enough firepower on paper – translating it onto the pitch will only happen if the midfield is right. If the midfield continues to malfunction then there cannot be any sacred cows.