Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers admitted that his players fell below the standards required in the Scottish Cup Final. Celtic missed out on a Treble after Aberdeen won on penalties after Callum McGregor and Alistair Johnston missed their spot kicks.
Speaking to BBC Sportsound after the game, Rodgers refused to single any players out but admitted that Celtic weren’t good enough on the day and that allowed Aberdeen to remain in the game.
“Our quality, our running, especially in the final third. We had a lot of the ball, but we lacked our combinations, our speed in the final third, our runs. When you play like that, and Aberdeen defend well, that made it difficult for us.
“With the greatest respect, it was more ourselves. We failed to get to the level you need to get to. We’ve played against a 5-3-2 so many times this season, scored goals against it. But you have to be slick, precise, running, and not be safe.
“There were too many times where we weren’t getting turned, we were setting the ball back. You need that personality.
“Unfortunately, that combination of not being at our level and Aberdeen being very motivated to defend, we couldn’t quite make the breakthrough.”
Rodgers’ comments are on the nose, the team lacked the tempo that they’ve shown all season. However, the substitutes at 60 minutes did little to impact the game. Engels, Idah and Kühn could have offered more in the final third if they had remained on the pitch, even if they struggled to get involved.
Celtic had chances to win the game, Arne Engels hit the woodwork as did Jefferey Schlupp but the biggest chance fell to Daizen Maeda, who broke through on goal only to be denied by Mitov. The Player of the Year has scored that chance a number of times this season and perhaps the volume of games that he’s played has taken its toll. There’s an argument that the squad was light but Jota and Reo Hatate were definitely missed.
Rodgers has spoken about adding 3-4 first team players to provide pace and power to the first team. The manager will want to get away for the summer before regrouping and starting preparations for the next campaign.
Well, it was tough to watch, same old negative backwards, sideways stuff and that type of football must come from the manager. Maybe I’m just too old to accept the ‘modern way’, but I find the current style of play really boring. Don’t recall a single, decent cross from the bye line, again is that just my nostalgia for genuine wingers, perhaps. Sadly, too many players contributed very little, every time we went forward, we stopped and played backwards, no incisive passes (in the old days they were call ‘defence splitting balls’). Honestly, in the last part of the game, you would think we were 3-0 up, such was the lack of intensity.
Hey Ho, Hope I last for another season.
You are bang on, it was the same before he left the first time too. The football is so easy to defend against because of the fear of giving the ball away whilst pinging a cross in. He is a second rate manager who has to go. If sevco were any good, we would have won nothing this season.
I wouldn’t expect him to say – “I picked the wrong team and my tactics were wrong.” But, he did and they were.
Correct. Idah has to go now and nawrocki has to start every game.
Idah was a panic buy. Nawrocki is better than Scales.
(I could add that his substitutions were wrong too, but you already knew that!)
Some sympathy for Idah. Not a consisten season, but he had no service yesterday. Nothing. Even the much maligned Kuhn made a few runs into space that weren’t picked up – sideways or backwards passes being the order of the day. Far too safe and reticent to hand Aberdeen possession when, over the 90 minutes, a few more high risk passes would surely have given us at least a couple of more chances.
The biggest frustration for me, and I’m only saying it because it’s been evident in too many games now (and everyone else is is saying it too but here we are 🤣) – plan B for playing against a 532 or a 541?? It can’t just be “buy a few players”.
We need a plan B in terms of formation and intent to break through these systems as all that side to side stuff got us nowhere. It’s not a sin to hit the odd long ball.
Also – how many SPL team are looking at this and now finally twigging “eureka” for next year. What do we do in those games when they all set up 532? The same thing? Or try something different?
Anyway congrats to Aberdeen. Begrudgingly, they came with a plan, they left nothing on the pitch, and they smashed all their penalties in.
As explanations go, that is total jumbo jumbo. If that’s the sort of guff he talks to the players no wonder you get performances like yesterday. The players have obviously had “keep possession” drilled into them at every training session and as a result, they don’t take many chances like sending long balls over the top of a packed defence for the front three to chase because it doesn’t tally with the managers instructions, even though two of them – Maeda and Idah – thrive on such moves and have scored important goals from them. Combine that against a team who simply park the bus and hope for a set-piece, a mistake or to get to a penalty shootout and you get a turgid spectacle like yesterday, reminiscent of the awful football played under Strachan with even the creative players stifled by the tactical instructions.