Former Celt Greg Taylor has praised Liam Scales for an outstanding display at left-back during Celtic’s clash at Ibrox on Sunday…
The Irish defender stepped in to fill the role normally occupied by Kieran Tierney, who was unavailable for the Glasgow Derby cup-tie because of injury.
Wearing the captain’s armband, Scales delivered a composed performance as Celtic held their rivals to a goalless draw over 120 minutes before securing their place in the Scottish Cup semi-finals with a penalty shootout victory. He was also named as Man of the Match in the only ratings that count – by Sandman writing definitively on The Celtic Star, if you missed that do yourself a favour!
Taylor – who left Celtic last summer to join PAOK – also commended the defensive contributions of Auston Trusty and Dane Murray.
Speaking via Premier Sports’ Scottish Football Social Club, Taylor said: “Scalesy has done unbelievable. You forget he came from Shamrock [Rovers] however many years ago and actually went on loan to Aberdeen.”
“To now be captaining the club away to Ibrox in a quarter-final just tells you his journey. He deserves it. An amazing guy, amazing player, will play where he wants. An absolute warrior and again, the same on Sunday, him with Trusty, they were immense.”
“And big Dane. Another one deserves a shoutout because he’s had a difficult moments, if you don’t even talk about the two major injuries he’s had, he’s had difficult moments since he’s come back.”
“I think the last few weeks he’s really showed big personality and showed the real top talent that he is so hopefully he can kick on from there.”
Speaking at a post-match media conference on Sunday, Scales himself hailed his side’s defensive resilience. He said: “It’s up there, it’s right up there. It would be one of the proudest moments for sure, captaining the team to win here.”
“I was actually the fifth penalty taker as well, so I’m glad it finished up before me, to be fair! It was definitely one of the proudest moments. The coin was blue on one side and green on the other, funnily enough, so you didn’t really have a choice.”
“You’re just hoping that it lands on the green side and you get to go down your end, but obviously it didn’t. I still had good confidence in the lads. We practised our penalties yesterday. I think all the lads who stepped up were brilliant. Good courage and good technique as well.”
“But again, it’s a quarter-final, we still need to go on and win the semi and win the final for it to be worthwhile.”
Conor Spence
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Personally thought it was a massive call by MoN to start scales in the LB position ahead of Saracchi imo?
But allowing trusty to play his preferred position as the left CB also worked perfectly for ourselves also.
It meant that within the tactical approach, we had to win each individual battle defensively, which we managed to do, even moreso with Murray replacing Arthur imo?
The downside, was we weren’t able to use the extra man available in our midfield areas, to control the game better than we managed to do so also.
Likewise we couldn’t win our attacking battles either, which became worse with the subs introduced into our attacking options.
With both defences, so on top, the game was looking for that moment to decide the outcome?
In that regards, not to much for either side to be making big claims about imo?
But there has been very few occasions this season, where we can make claims that our defensive set up, actually gained a massive result for ourselves this season?
Had become more use to our defensive set up costing ourselves more so?
All this achieved, with 4 of the 5 missing, with how our squad was originally formed?
Going forward, we look in far better shape defensively now, and sinisalo has to take credit for an extra calmness added into our defensive play imo?
On the bigger picture, we have still some decent options to be added to the squad for next season already. Still believe that Julian and Saracchi would be great additions also for ourselves imo.
In the squad building process during the summer, getting our defensive set up right, will be huge for ourselves next season.
Personally don’t believe that we are to far away, from maybe having that already in position for ourselves imo?