This season has been one that is so unique that it is hard to compare with any other in all my years of supporting Celtic…
There has been enough drama in one campaign that even the writers of a soap opera would have struggled to create a storyline so rife with intrigue.
Over the past few months many, including myself, have compared it to the dreaded ‘covid season’ under Neil Lennon and there are certainly parallels between the two but what makes this different is that somehow we are still managing to just about eke out results to keep our head above the water.
If you remember back to the 2020/21 season, there were no last minute winners. There were no moments of luck where we snatched three points or progressed in the cup after playing poorly. We were pretty much woeful from start to finish. There was the pathetic attempt at ten in a row. We went out of the League Cup in the second round. We exited the Scottish Cup in the fourth round. We ended bottom of our Europa League group.
This season is different. The worry I have however is that our current run is unsustainable. The more I watch this team the more I see us sliding towards the cliff edge.
I don’t need to go through the multiple dramas that has played out already this season as we have all lived every painstaking minute of it so I’ll skip forward to the bit where Martin O’Neill and his team are back at the helm again, for the second time this season, a campaign where we have also had two other managers already in the hot seat.
Martin did incredibly well in his earlier stint after the departure of Brendan Rodgers, keeping us on course in the league, the League Cup and in Europe. The perfect man to steady the ship and navigate it through troubled waters.
During that period we didn’t care how he did it, we were just glad that the results were positive. After the Nancy disaster, Martin and his team came back again and incredibly dragged this squad out of their slump and into the next rounds in the Scottish Cup and into the knockout phase of the Europa League. They have also kept us in the race for the title.
The cracks are starting to show however and I’m worried at just how much longer we can continue to perform the way we are before our luck runs out and the whole season implodes.
Between referee bias/incompetence, Celtic Park’s atmosphere resembling a morgue, ongoing boycotts and protests against the board and drama over player recruitment this season has all the ingredients to be a disaster.
To me however even more worrying is the fact that our performances on the pitch just don’t seem to be improving. Yes we are somehow still managing to grind out wins but it’s completely unsustainable. We are balancing on a cliff edge and it now feels to me like even the smallest breeze could be enough to topple us over that edge, and as I look down I can’t see any trees below that will be there to break our fall.
I don’t know if Martin O’Neill is a lucky manager. What I do know however is that you can’t keep relying on last minute goals or a moment of magic here and there to sustain a challenge over a whole campaign. At some point your luck will run out.
Performances have to improve if we are to have any chance of having success this season. I don’t know what it is affecting the players but at times it seems like the vast majority of them are sleepwalking through games. They can’t keep relying on a rousing teamtalk from Martin O’Neill, as clearly happened before extra time on Saturday, to push them on. They need to find that mentality from the first kick of the ball and maintain it for over 90 minutes.
The coaches need to prove they have the ability to get this team playing the way they want. I’ve noticed during the last couple of matches that we have been slipping back to the Brendan Rodgers ‘horse shoe’ tactics that frustrated so many at the start of the season.
Are the players just reverting back to what they know? Our coaches need to come up with something better as teams in Scotland have worked out how to counteract this tactic a long time ago. We have brought in players such as Cvancara and Adamu that should mean we can perhaps play in a style more familiar to Martin O’Neill. A style that will give the opposition more to think about, one that’s less obvious than what has been on show recently.
Whatever the plan is, the players and coaching staff need to implement it quickly. There is no way we can continue as we are and hope to continue to progress on all three fronts.
We have two fixtures ahead of us that give us a chance to try something new. Two games where we have to try and improve performance and really lay a marker down. On the other side of those two fixtures is a run of four seriously tough away fixtures that will define our season. One that if things don’t improve on the pitch could see our hopes in the three remaining competitions this season go up in smoke.
It’s now or never for this Celtic team if they want to salvage anything from this arduous season. Over to you Bhoys.
Conall McGinty
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It does seem at times that The Blessed One is carrying our team on his back, but, at 74 he can’t do it for much longer.
NOT ANOTHER PENNY.
Just stick a strng man in the acre of the area on line abd play of him that how you beat parking the bus we cant chip over defense they sit right on top of goalkeepers more shots we have to stop passes getting entersepted allow break aways as seen against falkirk and dundee but they play that way no blind passes across pitch im just glad at home but kilmarnock away and that pitch not as bad but still plastic winning the second ball is what thats all about
Unfortunately I don’t see much changes happening within our play, until something is decided upon the calmac role imo?
With calmac sitting deeper and trying to take the ball off the CBs, it tends to reduce our options in playing out from the back, and losing the ball to easily in the midfield areas. Allows for teams to press ourselves far to easily, which they all are becoming far more confident in doing so imo?
I wouldn’t class both Scales and Trusty as good ball playing CBs, hence calmac dropping deeper as a potential result?
That area won’t be getting addressed for the remainder of this season anyway, and even the disruption of kasper isn’t great either?
So any new incoming manager will have to address this situation, especially if he wants to implement his playing style upon our players.
More of a summer issue to consider moreso, than hoping to get resolved for the remainder of this season.
But getting calmac pushing up higher would help, than sitting deeper and dictating a game that suits his pace moreso imo?
Might help reduce the amount of backwards and sideways passing in going nowhere as a result, with allowing teams to get back into there shape far too easily?
All the in- depth analysis is futile . The simple truth is that we have no mid-field ; Calmac has lost that extra half-yard which made him irreplacable . You can see him struggling like mad to produce his ,” Old-self ” but it is just not happening . Engels is a total disappointment and fails time and time again to justify his price-tag . In other words , he is no better or worse than most of the mid-field players in Scottish football . Hetate , like Calmac is past his , “Sell-buy” date . You can still see the old flashes of brilliance but that is all they are , ” Flashes ” , (have you watched him trying to recover , when Celtic lose the ball in transition ) ? So why does MON keep playing him ? Remember the Albert Einstien addage :-
” Peforming an experiment over and over again , hoping to get a different result ” , is the first sign of madness .
We need an ,”Enforcer ” in mid-field —A Roy Keane or a Niel Lennon in his ” Hay-day”. We then need a play-maker an Iniesta or Bertie Auld who can dictate play and bring the best out of younger or lesser players . The frame-work of a good team is there but we need the glue to hold it together , Possibly Oxlade-Chamberlain is that man ; if we can get him up to fitness quickly , with a ” Celtic attitude ” . If he produces the above attributes , which I think he might all our worries will be over . From a serious optimist—-MON should have righted these wrongs in the recent transfer window ?