Scott Brown last night saw the lights start to go out on his own playing career at Celtic and has been around long enough to recognise that fact and also to appreciate the magnitude of the situation at the club this season. The Celtic captain can see the chances of having a decent season slipping away and he doesn’t really know what can be done to retrieve it.
If he heads online he’ll get plenty of advice on that this morning from the vast majority of a Celtic support, sickened by the display last night against a makeshift Sparta Prague side.
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We have two goalkeepers neither of whom inspire any confidence.
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We have the worst centre half at the club in decades and he’s on huge money.
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We have a right back who continually is missing in action as teams like Prague exploit the huge gaps that he leaves when he plays as a right winger.
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We have Scott Brown past his best in the middle of the park and Ryan Christie running about playing for himself and a move away from a place we ironically enough call Paradise.
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We have forwards like Odsonne Edouard who isn’t fit or worse isn’t interested.
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We have an entire management team which has been assembled to suit the way the CEO wants to control every aspect of the football club and that means we have ended up with Lennon, Kennedy and Gavin Strachan – a coach we brought in from PETERBOROUGH.
So what can be done? It’s a shambles of a situation but we need to get a short term plan in place as a matter of urgency.
Is Bain better than Barkas? No he is not. That wasn’t his fault last night but he does not inspire confidence. Fraser Forster should be brought back when the window opens but on Sunday play Barkas.
We need a strong and reliable back four. Drop Duffy and Frimpong and if Ajer is hit he starts as does Elhamed. In midfield play McGregor, Turnbull, Christie and Rogic in a diamond. Play two up front and boy are we struggling to select two from the five available but Griffiths and Edouard probably should get a chance to re-ignite their early season partnership.
Who picks the team on Sunday remains to be seem but this morning that has to be in doubt. If Neil Lennon stays in pst he must know that anything other than three points at Fir Park and it’s over for him.
“We’ve got to be strong now. This is where character comes through,” Broony told the media, as reported by Scottish Sun. “We know we have quality players who can perform, we just need to make sure we do it week in, week out.
“We can’t have lapses now and then. We need to be focused and give everything on the park as a minimum. We just have to get together and work hard so everyone knows how good a Celtic team this is.
“We’ve not hit those standards yet for whatever reason but we need to make sure we do it quickly. This season is slowly going and we need to hit top form quickly. It wasn’t a team performance tonight. It was a group of individuals. It wasn’t good enough from start to finish and we got what we deserved,” the Celtic captain said.
“We started off not too bad. Then we lose a goal and I think everyone’s heads went down from there and we didn’t recover well. We didn’t play as well as we can do and we know it is our responsibility to bounce back now.
“We need to make sure we do that extremely quickly because we have a game on Sunday. I’m talking about today’s performance which wasn’t good enough. I’m not ranking it, just saying today’s wasn’t anywhere near where it should have been.
“That’s start to finish, throughout the whole team. Probably not one person got pass marks. We know it wasn’t good enough and now we need to bounce back really quickly. You look at the performance on Sunday. We were very good on Sunday but very sloppy today. I would love to put my finger on it and tell you what it was but we need to make sure we are better all over the park – we work harder, we fight more, we create more chances and defend better as a team,” Scott Brown added.
“For us, today’s performance was nowhere near the standard set at this club and especially over the last 13 years I have been here. It’s not acceptable.”
Scott Brown also had a message for the Celtic support. “The message to fans is we will fight and scratch to make sure we bounce back. Sunday is HUGE now and we need to make sure we put on a performance and get three points.
“It wasn’t a day we could say we gave supporters what they wanted. They’ve had a lot of fantastic times and we need to make sure they continue. We know that wasn’t the standard we accept at this club.
“The pressure should be on the players, not the manager. The manager has been fantastic for us from when he first came in. It’s about the players on the park and we need to take responsibility.”
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