SPFL Celtic V The Huns Thursday January 2nd kick off 3PM Sky Sports football

I admit I am still concerned about the last two OF games and probably will be until we play them again away from Parkhead and beat them in good fashion.

The SPL allows deficiencies to be masked very easily. Playing teams that are happy to sit in with no press and allow us all the time in the world on the ball. You can be lured into thinking players are better on the ball than they are.

In reality I dont think any of our defenders are strong on the ball. They are good for SPL level where they have plenty of ball under no pressure and lots of time on the ball. At European level, not good enough to be basing a play out from the back style on.

The huns are ordinary enough but they did their homework on us and we didnt take our first get out jail free card. The second game was probably as dominant as the huns have been against anyone this season. Could have been a 5 or 6 nil spanking like a Ross County or Kilmarnock with not a shot to show for it.

 

I do get what you're saying regarding the hun games.

They almost had us in the league Cup and we offered nothing other than predictably on the 2nd. Those two results by themselves are worrying. As is our inability to adapt to their very obvious changes in tactics against us.

But we've done ok in the CL with games we went to play defensive. Even with CCV out.

Rodgers can struggle at times with his ego I suppose, so we could do with his attitude towards hun games changing.

If he approached those games with the same attitude he does for Europe I'm sure we'd pump them.

But it's an opportunity for him to bask in his ego as we're so far ahead domestically. I don't blame him, he's earned it. But that game new year was embarrassing for us and him. Hope he learns.

He has talent so have faith. He'll pump them next time we're at I,Bron .

 

It was on regularly and that’s the annoying bit, because they shut down the passes we so usually before working into they spaces. Stopped Taylor going in the middle, stopped AJ from the overlap and carrying the ball upto where Kuhn can get the pass to be dangerous.

And they made sure that if McGregor is getting the ball, because he always will they can’t stop that from happening but they didn’t attempt to this time, they made sure when he does he faced our goal, in awkward places, and the support he usually has and passes that are usually there weren’t on.

They done it in the final, and Scales coming on and his use of the ball changed it. That for me shows if we didn’t keep doing the same things, and getting progressively sloppier and rash, rushed, misplacing the ball and frustrated as the game went on. All it takes is a couple small unexpected changes that they haven’t drilled themselves into doing against us, and it’d be a different game. BR doesn’t change the patterns of play this stint as a manager though, but I think he knows now, he tested it out against Dundee United when he made changes.

He won’t sit back and continue watching him being out manoeuvred tactically by * Clement.

They played the exact same tactics against Spurs and we’re not too far away from what they do, in a different way tbf but that working bouyed them, the final we got on penalties and they felt robbed and that helped them more. Then we sat for 90 minutes and didn’t react at all.

And honestly watch Brugge highlights against us. That’s the exact formula they’ve copied, because it worked very well against us - Brugge just lacked quality up top.

 

On copying the tactics of Brugge I totally agree, they 100% did this and others have tried similar since. One thing though is Brugge were a far better team than they were at it. I agree Brugge lacked something up top but the goals we lost vs them were ones we didn’t lose against Brugge as despite not playing well for the first hour of that game, the CCV mistake aside we didn’t gift the opposition various chances. I would also say Brugge were far more solid defensively than they were.

Where Rangers did or attempted to do the things Brugge did and I agree we need to tweak it if we even reached the level we did against Brugge the worst we come out of that game is with a draw as we don’t gift cheap chances the way we did to Rangers.

I also saw their Spurs game and they were a total shambles in that game, again Rangers used that similar tactic but ultimately it was chaos ball and Spurs were as bad as we were Rangers just didn’t take their chances. Spurs by in large in that game were more akin to a middling European side than a top half EPL team they were awful.

So I do agree we need to sort out some tactical tweaks to counter what they are doing but if our individual levels of performance are of that for so many in our team tactics won’t matter as they couldn’t do the basics right.

 

Huns attempted the same tactics at parkhead earlier in the season and we're better side for the 1st 10 minutes.

Rodgers tweaked the shape, dropped Bernardo in beside McGregor to give back 4 more options tonoss out from and we ran over the top of them.

I thought the brugge game, the cup final and especially game at Ibrox was crying out for a similar tweak. Really don't understand why he didn't try that.

Would also of had the added advantage of getting Hatate further away from our box, where his general sloppiness on the ball wouldn't have been so dangerous