Kilmarnock 2 Celtic 1
Well, we now have to face it. Winning the SPFL, while far from impossible, will now take a major effort, and although there is still an awful long way to go – some 32 games, by my reckoning, we have to say that the odds are against us. Today was another hard knock, and it will be a serious test of the character of Brendan Rodgers, the players and the supporters if we are going to come back. But the most important match in football is always the next one – and we must now beat St Johnstone in the League Cup, and then Aberdeen at Parkhead if we are to restore our credibility.
We cannot blame the pitch. That always was a smokescreen, for a good player can play on a tattie field, or the surface of the moon, and in any case Rangers, Hearts and Aberdeen will have to play there was well.
We must rather look at ourselves and ask the questions. In particular, we must ask why we persisted in passing the ball across the centre of the field so often when the scores were level. By all means do that when we are ahead, but when a goal is required, the ball must – indeed it only can go forward. Leigh Griffiths took his goal well, but in the second half, he didn’t get the ball nearly often enough. I always feel that there is another goal in Leigh at any time, but the ball must come to him.
And we really have to learn again to shoot from the edge of the box! Please look back at the videos of the Invincible season, and watch the amount of goals we scored from 20 yards! Armstrong, Rogic, Forrest, McGregor all score vital goals from there. Let’s do that again, all ye midfielders!
The goals were unfortunate. Burke was left on his own for a shot. It didn’t look like a chance but, as they say, if you don’t buy a ticket, you won’t win the lottery and he was lucky to get the ball to go in off the post. The winning goal – and I didn’t think it was a corner, incidentally, – saw two mistakes. The Kilmarnock man should not have got his header in, and other was that I was always taught at primary school that a full back must guard a post at a corner! Elementary, my dear Lustig!
Dedryck Boyata had a bizarre game. Nearly sent off in the first minute, a few errors, a running battle with Mr Broadfoot, an awful miss in the first half, and at one point a seeming desire to come off – or what did he say to Brendan Rodgers when he ran over to him at that early point in the first half? And poor Jack Hendry seems to be around when things don’t go well. He can expect a barrowload of vitriol and abuse on social media. Can he cope with that? Or would things have been different if Filip Benkovic had not “felt his Achilles” in the warm up? Don’t say we have got ourselves another crock in the defence! One Kompper is enough!
Mulumbu? Worth another go, but today there was clearly a certain amount of “previous” with Kilmarnock.
So where do we go from here? I think that the time has now come to say that Scott Sinclair needs a rest, at least. He contributed little today and it is quite astonishing just how far he has declined over that past 18 months. But I also think that it is important that we have no knee-jerk reactions about Michael Johnston, Lewis Morgan and Ryan Christie. There is talent there and they need a chance to grow. They also need time and patience, and patience is not a thing that Celtic supporters have in large supply. What is really required here is a quiet determination to fight back, and to realise that we are all in this together. The players, trust me, will all be hurting as much as we are. Hurling abuse at them will not help.
We still have a little time to get things right in the League. That does not apply for Wednesday night. We really have to win at Perth, or settle for a League Cup final along the lines of something like Rangers v Hearts. That would really spoil our Christmas!
Hayley on the TV is certainly a nice looking lady (pardon me if that sounds sexist!), but the awful gaffe that she made when she said “Rangers” when she meant “Kilmarnock” was what is called a Freudian slip. A pardonable confusion, one feels. It was not quite as bad however as her rather strange statement at one point that more and more Kilmarnock supporters are coming back to watch their team. Really, Hayley? You could have fooled me! Indeed I fear that the penny has still not dropped at Rugby Park. All the Killie fans could be accommodated in one stand, and Celtic fans could give them even more money by filling up the other.
I wonder if St Johnstone will have wised up to that one. Somehow, I doubt it.
And so to McDiarmid on Wednesday night. A plea to Celtic – can we please have the green and white hoops on the players’ backs on Wednesday? Can we ditch that awful urine yellow? It simply does not look like Celtic, and maybe that is why we did not play like Celtic!
But we must take it on the chin. We stop, have the proverbial long hard look at ourselves… and then we fight back. Our supporters sing songs with lyrics like “faithful through and through” and “we stood with pride and took defeat”. Prove it, supporters! Rise to it, players! And it starts again at McDiarmid Park on Wednesday night at 7.45 pm. BT Sport, I believe, for those who are not going.
David Potter
