Former Celtic right-back Mark Wilson spoke to Sky Sports earlier today outside of Celtic Park to reflect on the match at Rugby Park yesterday afternoon when Celtic collapsed in the second half against Kilmarnock with Derek McInnes’ side fighting back from a 1-o deficit to beat Celtic 2-1 and in doing so open up the title race.
Certainly it was Celtic fans whose heads were down going into work this morning while their rivals from across the city were sporting broad grins believing that their team has the form and the momentum under their Belgian coach Philippe Clement to win the title.
The two sides meet at Celtic Park on 30 December and before that theRangers have the chance to lift the League Cup for the first time in their history. Barry Robson’s Aberdeen stand in their way and the former Celtic midfielder is unbeaten against the Ibrox outfit this season.
Wilson is not the most popular of former players doing punditry yet it’s hard to argue with his analysis after a truly dreadful second half performance at Rugby Park. A big factor in the defeat was the absence of Cameron Carter-Vickers – Celtic’s last five domestic defeats in the Scottish Premiership have all come when he’s been unavailable – and getting him back for the challenges that lie ahead before the winter break is absolutely essential for Brendan Rodgers.
Here’s Mark Wilson speaking to Sky Sports earlier today…
🍀 “It is glaringly obvious that the backup to the first starting 11 is nowhere near good enough…”
Mark Wilson assesses Celtic’s current form and what that defeat at Kilmarnock has done for the title race 🔽 pic.twitter.com/klXigeR0nC
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) December 11, 2023
Our passing lines out of defence was cut out totally in the 2nd half yesterday and Rodgers never responded to it whatsoever?
Iwata was man marked in the 1st half making him ominous and was able to respond with calmac and Oreily taking advantage in the midfield areas.
Killie tighten up that in the second half and were able to dominant the game from there on in.
Yet when the extra man was needed in the midfield area, especially when we haven’t got the out ball, by going long, we still persisted with the tactics that weren’t working?
Who is that down to?
Our wide men became non existent with the midfield areas totally overrun and out battled?
Would the sacrificing of the wider men and adding kyogo with possibly Paulo have potentially worked better, especially when no service getting to our more attack minded players?
For Rodgers who is meant to be this so called tactical genius, I thought he was extremely poor with his own decision making yesterday?
Staying the same with trying to use subs to get better results from a system that clearly wasn’t working 2nd half, was very poor management upon Rodgers imo.
He has turned Kyogo a goal machine for us into a guy who will be lucky to hit 20 goals a season now