A late win over Motherwell was supposed to be a springboard, a moment to build from. Instead, looking back, it feels like the warning we ignored…
Because what unfolded at Dens Park yesterday wasn’t a blip or an off day. It was confirmation that Celtic, from the boardroom to the dugout, are looking lost.
Out-fought and out-thought by Dundee, a team that hadn’t beaten us at home in 37 years, Celtic fell 2–0, and the scoreline barely flattered the hosts.
The defeat leaves Celtic five points behind Hearts, with a Tynecastle showdown next weekend that already feels season-defining. The manager had a fortnight to address glaring problems, both in personnel and tactical approach. Yet we turned up at Dens Park looking exactly the same. No belief. No creativity. No urgency.
It’s staggering that a manager of Brendan Rodgers’ calibre could oversee two full weeks of preparation and still produce a performance this flat. Nothing changed, nothing improved, and nothing suggested there’s any real work being done behind the scenes.
For all the anger swirling around the club, the away support were immense. Yes, there was a protest at kick-off, tennis balls thrown in frustration at the board, but when that moment passed, the backing was total. Even at two goals down, they sang. They’ve never stopped believing. Sadly, it feels like they’re the only ones left who do.
The goals we lost told their own story. Dundee’s opener came from a corner, Clark Robertson rising unchallenged as Carter-Vickers lost his man. The second was even worse, the same defender deflecting the ball into his own net after a moment of panic and poor positioning. Both moments were self-inflicted. Both moments were avoidable.
Celtic had the ball, as always, over 80% of it, in fact. But what did they actually do with it? One Iheanacho shot off the post. One KT sitter. One Hatate effort blocked. A late Balikwisha strike well saved. And around 700 passes, most of them leading absolutely nowhere.
Here’s the stat that really stands out, Celtic completed roughly 700 passes to Dundee’s 150. On paper, that sounds dominant. In reality, it’s damning. Only 199 of those passes were forward. Eighty-five went backwards. You can do the sums for what happened to the rest.
That means for every time Celtic tried to play with intent, there were four more passes going sideways or back. This is football that goes nowhere, possession for the sake of possession, an endless loop of recycling that gives every opponent time to reset and breathe. Even Dundee, with just 18% of the ball, never looked uncomfortable. They didn’t need to press. They just watched Celtic pass themselves into submission.
Worryingly, Brendan Rodgers looks like a man who’s lost interest. His pre-match interview was flat, his in-game changes timid, his tactics baffling. The three-at-the-back switch in the second half was particularly lopsided, effectively dropping a right-back for a striker, creating gaps and confusion, and the whole thing felt like it was being run on autopilot.
Rodgers is supposed to be a top-level coach. But where’s the coaching? Where’s the spark? Where’s the improvement? Instead, we’re watching a team going through the motions, led by a manager who seems to be doing the same. His post-match comments about makes and models of cars sounded like a politician making excuses long after they’ve inherited the mess. Explanations might fly for a few months, but responsibility doesn’t go away. Sooner or later, the solutions have to come.
It’s the same for Rodgers. No wingers to trust? Play wing-backs. No strikers? Play a false nine.
Do something. Don’t just deflect. Excuses are fine until the window closes. After that, a coach of Rodgers’ standing should have found workable solutions, domestically at least, to see this team through to January. The board won’t act, they’ll wait him out to save on compensation. So, either the manager earns his coin, or the form continues.
This is now the sixth game this season where Celtic have failed to score. We’ve gone from taking Bayern Munich to the last minute in Europe nine months ago to being second-best to Dundee. The fall-off isn’t gradual. It’s a nosedive.
The board’s obsession with profit over progress has left us with a weaker, thinner squad and now it appears, a disinterested manager. The team has no invention, no intensity, and no identity. What used to be fast, fearless football is now sterile, risk-averse, and absolutely joyless. Celtic were once a team that made opponents fear what was coming. Now, they make opponents comfortable.
Fair play to Dundee, they were everything we weren’t, organised, committed and confident. They didn’t need the ball, they just needed belief. Pressley’s side understood the assignment, frustrate, wait, punish, and executed it perfectly. They earned every bit of their win. Meanwhile, Celtic spent 82% of the match holding the ball and doing next to nothing with it.
Now comes the biggest domestic test yet, Hearts at Tynecastle. And based on current evidence, who genuinely believes this Celtic team has the courage, structure, or spark to go there and fight for it?
That last-minute winner over Motherwell was supposed to be the start of something. In truth, it was a warning, the moment we should have realised that luck, not form, was keeping this season afloat. And when the luck runs out, as it did at Dens Park, what’s left is an uncomfortable truth.
Celtic is a club in freefall. A team without belief. A manager, it seems, playing out time. And a fanbase still standing, still singing, still waiting, for someone, anyone, to care as much as they do.
Niall J
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I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again. BR is no “elite” manager. Even down south he has been found out. I once read a Liverpool blog that did a “special” on BR and it didn’t pull no punches. Stated very clearly that BR cannot change. And just about everyone down south knows it.
Why has he got them playing this football equivalent to ‘ping pong’? And then having the nerve to repeat his crap about finding solutions. And it’s not the first post-match interview he has said this. He’s throwing players under the bus for playing a system he tells them to play.
Then we have serious questions being asked of big-money-earners CCV, McGregor and Schmeichel. To think that keeper earns more than double what Sinisalo earns is totally baffling. And we have a central defender in CCV, a guy who has scored more than one O.G. and flinched out the way to let a ‘Rangers’ player score.
Then, as far as i’m concerned, we have a captain who can’t motivate those around him. And a captain who reinforces his “gaffers” anti-football style. Even when sleekit BR criticises the players for not being direct enough, McGregor is right there up his “gaffers” arse. Watch McGregor in his pre or post match interviews, his head actions, as he speaks, is almost a clone of BR when he is interviewed.
It’s not looking good for three HUGE games we have coming up against Sturm Graz, Hearts and the tribute act. This could very well become our season from hell. And BR is 100% to blame for it. To emphasis my point, go and compare our team price tag with that of Dundee.
And don’t even mention the ‘accidental footballer’, Liam Scales. It’s even more galling when you think of the better defenders we let go recently, Nawrocki and Lagerbielke etc.
BR will be spouting the same pish about solving problems when we get humped by the 3 teams i mentioned earlier in my comment. And they will hump us, unless BR does something about his anti-football ping-pong suicide mission.
PLEASE someone take him back to England and send ‘Big Ange’ back to where he belongs, at Paradise.
Celtic fans should understand that there actions are affecting the team. The negative play starts with them. You all seem to be blind to this . Sheep is how I describe this protest . Do you not understand the club is not owned by you. If you don’t want to support celtic why not disappear and give up your season tickets.
Rosgers has been found out. Elite my arse. But it can’t help having the wage thieves Kennedy and Strachan. What do they actually contribute. Rodgers is a one trick pony and I am bored with continual drivel about needi g to find answers. We have needed answers since the Bayern game and Rodgers continues with this turgid drivel we are being asked to watch.
The Grey Brigade have a big decision to make in the coming weeks and that is either to get rid of Rodgers or back him in the January window.
They dont want to give him any more money as they dont rate him but who would be confident of them having managerial candidates in Lawwell’s drawer ready to contact
Could it be Lennon Part 3 😁
Every club we play knows our starting eleven, they usher is sideways, contrary to us ‘probing’ for an opening. They have players with pace who run through our midfield, or past our fullbacks. We have players who will not attempt to take on players, this should not be a wingers only task, midfield and fullback should also be similarly tasked.
We are not a three at the back team, 4-4-2 might work better, a player like e.g. Donovan could fit in well As the right sided midfielder, use Maeda and Yamada as front two, players with pace.
Also, as a coach I would stop publicly stating I should have had been backed by the board and given better players, compare my team to Honda civics etc because my players would love to play for me hearing that, wouldn’t they . . .
Richard Cook nailed it!
Cal Mac was finished 12 months ago, CCV has never been good enough too slow gets turned to easy and rarely wins anything in the air.
Rodgers couldn’t win with a Liverpool team any other manager would have. He got Leicester relegated and the last time we were close to this terrible was just before he scuttled off down south.
No plan B, and plan A is pass the ball until on edge of opponents 18 yard box and a defender squares up, then pass backwards until you put your own keeper under pressure.
Ange coming back is a non starter. He needs to buy players that suit his style and have a full pre season with them.
That’s why he shouldn’t have taken the Forrest job a few games into the season.
If we were smart we would have signed Espirito Santo the minute Forrest released him and offered Rodgers a job as a ball boy.
This team would die in the first high intensity training session with Ange.
Vince Cannon go soak yer head.
The fans make the club. Not one player, owner, board member or manager was at the club when I started supporting them. And I will still be here long after those players, board owners etc are gone.
This is our club and it has been hijacked by greedy kleptocrates and if you are OK with that then you should absolutely feck off to Govan with your peers.