Joe Miller, former Celtic winger and member of the 1988 Centenary double-winning side, reckons Ange Postecoglou needs more variation in the way his team plays. This comes on the back of more dropped points to Livingston at home on Saturday just past.
The Hoops stalled on Saturday, failing to take advantage of playing before their rivals, whilst also cutting the deficit to two points midweek. Criticism has came Celtic’s way since then, after struggling to break down a wall of black jerseys against the West Lothian side.
Miller insists that the lack of variation or Plan B is starting to become frustrating to watch. Speaking to Daily Record, he said: “I’ve been at the last two games against St Johnstone and Livingston where both sides parked the bus – and by the way their tactics would get the game stopped – but it’s up to Celtic to break that down.
“It seems to be the same way it’s been for the last two years. “It’s too predictable. “Possession football is fine but you can’t set up in the last third of the park to try and break teams down and put balls into the box when there’s 10 opponents in there.
“It might look good that they are dominating possession but there’s no space there to exploit. It’s difficult when you have wide players – Jota, Abada, Ralston all parked in the last third – it’s congested.”
“They need to find a different way to play in those situations. It’s too repetitive,” Joe Miller stated.
“Some times you have to invite a team to come out. Other times you need to win a game ugly – if that means launching it up the park quickly, taking the opposition by surprise and allowing a different type of player to battle for things – then so be it.”
“Giakoumakis is a good target man and was probably needed for Saturday because of the physicality of Livingston’s defence. I probably would have played Kyogo and him together from the start. Giakoumakis could have been that man to win knock downs for Kyogo to run onto when they wanted to mix it up.
“But they just seem to want to have tippy-tappy football round the box. “The midfielders just want to play this passing game. But they are playing like robots. A team like Livingston taking four points off you in two games just isn’t good enough.”
Miller pointed to his own time at Celtic and the way they would vary their play at times to suit the match. He added: “We could play, no doubt about it. But, if after 20 minutes it wasn’t working we would try something else. Maybe knock it long, get players running into channels but we don’t seem to have that now as teams are sitting deep and making it hard. We had a cavalier approach. We could break from deep – from big Packie Bonner throwing it to Chris Morris, through the midfield and to myself or whoever was on the wing – cross and goal. It was done at a pace and the length of the park. Other times we could go long. It was all about mixing it up.”
The ex-Celt also believe that Giorgos Giakoumakis should not have taken the penalty kick that was subsequently missed, insinuating that it was decided on the field instead of before-hand as reports said.
He continued: “There will be a regret that they missed that chance to go top and ramp up the pressure a bit on Rangers. The chance was there with the penalty. Giakoumakis has grabbed the ball but Juranovic has scored the last two so should have grabbed it back. Keep taking them til you miss, that’s how it should be.
“Keep taking them til you miss, that’s how it should be. The manager should have been screaming at Juranovic to take it – I don’t buy that he put Giakoumakis on penalty duty.”
Whether Miller is accurate or not re the penalty incident remains to be seen. However, their is credence to what he says in regards to mixing it up more and maybe going more direct into the frame of Giakoumakis if their is not penetration around the box.
Granted Ange has not got the team fixed to his specifications as of yet, although this is seen by many in the support as all the more reason for mixing up the style and system now and then.
Paul Gillespie
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