Sandman’s Definitive Ratings – Celtic 55 The Scourge 55

SANDMAN’S DEFINITIVE RATINGS: CELTIC v THE SCOURGE…

BANE – 6.5/10 – Always confident on the ball, even while smashing it into young Raquel’s face to induce comedic heart-attacks. One fine save from a Kamp Kapo volley but not really much else to do as we continued the Season Of Sleepwalking Into Mediocrity.

JONJO O’NEILL – 5.5/10 – Exhausted from the Cheltenham jumps and it showed. Confused as to our constant forward momentum, he mixes up his ends and fires a pass back out for a corner. Which produced The Unthinkable; Sneaking in at the back post like it was a Medellin porn dungeon. Remained consistent thereafter, realised he was in a football derby and not a horsey one.

AJER – 7.5/10 MOTM – He will not be defeated. Fought for entrance to Valhalla and bullied his defence into competency bar the aberration of their goal – another pathetic flaw of out and out zonal marking; nobody on the Henson puppet or the back post. His drive and power should have shored up a convincing win but yet again older, more experienced heads didn’t follow the young Viking’s lead.

RAQUEL – 6/10 – Let the mutant Cabbage Patch Doll run off her to score – only mistake of another solid showing; coaching must bear some of the blame as zonal trumps woman-to-creature marking again to our cost.

DREXL – 7/10 – Best game we’ve seen from him. Worked them senseless down the left all first half, drawing their lumbering circus freak out of position. Ended up more of a winger than defender. Icing on the cake would have seen him draw his Glock and tap out Gollum along with the knowing sneer that greeted his yellow.

BROON – 6.5/10 – Well, he lasted. He got the Fuglee booked, he strolled around mostly in command. But the victory escaped him and he might have made way for a more energetic presence as the second half slipped into familiar toil over style.

Bigger than football. pic.twitter.com/1ubG7TQ1gh

— Show Racism the Red Card 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@SRtRCScotland) March 21, 2021

CALMAC – 6.5/10 – Calmac v the Undead Filth was to be the title of the fourth Sam Raimi Evil Dead movie but production was shelved due to Covid. Today, Calmac reprised his role – a thorn in their side with his bursts from inside left. Then the second period arrived and as with the rest of 20/21 Calmac’s effectiveness drained like zombie’s blood from a chainsaw slash.

CORPUS CHRISTIE – 5.5/10 – The slackness starts with the saviour. Bizarre loose ball after 35 minutes had Drexl chasing deep into our half. Soon, Jonjo was to emulate that. Previously, Corpus had started like a man possessed. With a transfer. Shop Window Sunday began with flurries of movement that had the dastardly unable to contain him and some delightful clipped passes opening them up.

Then he began to flatter to deceive. Sure, picked a couple of passes, but also messed around and tossed possession away like a used Colombian gulag rent-boy getting stuffed in a kit bag. More seemed to break down around him in the latter part of the game than link-up and we lost fluency. He needs more in-game discipline and a manager roasting his costly dalliances.

EDDIE TURNBULL – 5/10 – He thought they’d died with the Empire, but here they were in front of him again; the club that time forgot. And he forgot to punish their historical crimes with some decent deliveries as he drifted into corpus territory, getting every second corner right, missing the crucial probes and passes at the pertinent moments. He carried a threat as he drifted between lines but was never menacing or deadly enough to compliment the progress we were making down the left.

ELSHAGYONLASSIE – 6/10 – First touch, goal! Second touch, scooped off the line by the offender in orange. Third touch, Rogic’s fist as he traipsed off. Nah, I’m not having the fawning over his movement and intermittent impact – he reminds me of Marc Antoine-fortune of the Mowbray era. And at least we owned that big guy. Elshag doesn’t appear from the mists of annonymity often but made his materialisations count today. Trouble is, French Eddy made him look good and his brief contributions got us a foothold in the game. However… Think of real class, think of constant class in action – think of the 90 minute contributions of a Larsson work-rate and contrast with what we got here. He’s a good player at times but we need a great player most of the time to compliment the other one we have.

FRENCH EDDY – 7/10 – What a waste. Never mind the bullshit spewed out about the diving header – it was French Eddy who put it on a plate with a perfect delivery. Eddy didn’t even realise he had a Celtic strike partner – he thinks Elshag’s his imaginary friend; Only comes out to play with him when he feels like it. Yet, here’s our maligned superstar, still top SPL scorer despite the atrocious nature of the season and his Covid absence/affect, and we still can’t find a cohort to fully exploit Eddy’s talent.

And that talent threatened to tear them up today… Alone Again Or, as The Damned sung for him. Fantastic feet and movement should have bagged him at least one. Sheer bad luck and typical defiance from the degenerate sex-pest in nets combined with weasel Golllum and his slo-mo vision to stop Eddy adding to his tally.

The ‘penalty’ – defender lunges, attacker flipped away from the desperatemlast-ditch effort, hits the deck. Pen and red at Mordor, no doubt. Amazing that a ref who can award nothing pens seen through the back of his head can’t comprehend the requisite punishment for a six-yard box defensive error.

What was Eddy to do? Stand still and show Barisic’s leg entangle his?

‘Hey, ref, I didn’t go down even tho’ he went through me’.

“Didn’t go down? Right, no pen. Went down? Simulation.”

Gollum. Obsequious Jimmy Hunt.

SUBS:

JAMESY – N/A – A brief flash, and he was gone.

ROGIC – N/A ‘Look Oz – sunshine!’

“Let me on, let me on!”

“Okay, just five minutes, though. Wear sunscreen.”

GRIFF – N/A – Barely enough time to score with McGregor never mind for us.

SORO – N/A – JFK displaying a sense of humour in injury time.

🗣 "I thought we were dominant for most of the game"

Celtic manager John Kennedy gives his thoughts on his sides performance against Rangers.

📺 Watch more reaction & analysis on Sky Sports pic.twitter.com/0ldtpiet2i

— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) March 21, 2021

JFK – 5/10 –  Ah, ye bottled it. A free hit at the Despicable Thems and we get a safety play from the NFL; We wanted a Hail Mary humping, but got a defensive line of scrimmage. The point of setting up to contain was pointless in our circumstances – there’s no more damage to be done; the only gains on the table were to be scalped from a proper thrashing of ‘the chumpions’ and some inroads made towards restoring normal service.

Meet the new boss, same as the old one – we got the season-long deliberation that ended Lennony’s adventures as a familiarly stagnant formula attempted to unravell their familiarly stoic and rigidly predictable methodology. The Celtic mantra has always been – you beat banality with FLAIR. Our current approach has all the style of flares; The 70s ones, not the kind the Onion Bears shove up each others jackies.

OVERALL – 6/10 – Somebody re-write the script. As long-running drama goes, our final season of the great TEN has been as shambolic, risible and continually bewildering as Game Of Thrones’ Colin Nish season 8. Every game a template for the next – create chances, pin back opponents, maybe score, but can’t finish them off before they get back into the game and we fade poorly through the second half.

Could have been out of sight today before we shot ourselves in the foot. The indignity of letting the uglies’ ugly nick his first goal against us, and even then he popped in a point-blank header off the post. This was the result they crazed – another in the undefeated league run. And instead of going all-out to either slaughter them or go
down fighting, we… Well, we approached it in the manner we’ve sadly grown used to – too much respect, not enough dynamism, verve or desire.

They looked there for the taking – apprehensive about conceding their unbeaten run, playing it safe and hoping for a break or two. They do their jobs – they’re not capable of much more than being a set, predictable and functioning collective. But it gets them results because they apply everything they’ve got to the agreed scheme.

Celtic on the other hand, this season have rolled the dice and hoped, reliant on inconsistent individual contributions that have too often come up short, failed to ignite in conjunction, or delivered when the chips were down.

We’ve shown no cohesion, in performance, thought or design. This squad is largely the same players who were blowing all and sundry away three and four years ago – just shows you what happens when you lose conditioning, coaching and focus.

Take your eye off the ball and history slips away. We’ve one league game left to salvage some reputation from the horror-show of the season – sometime soon in the Valley of the Shadow of Darkness. And we’d better turn up. Or never come home.

Go Away Now.

Sandman