Celtic v Hearts, all chat in here.

we will still win the league! they still have to go to tynecastle and tannadice lads !
do you think they will get full points there? and also we will gub them at mordor again .

 

Couldn't have said it any better ...

 

Rangers 2 - 0 up now. Looks like theres only a point in it now.

 

very poor today 1st 20mins looked promising

 

After we scored we could hardly get a kick of the ball, hearts looked the more likely to score how did it look promising for the first 20 mins.

I thought we were better in the second half, not the first.

 

Very poor today. Nakamura should have started imo. Broony was the poorest I've seen him in months and * was Boruc doing at the goal. Great strike but Boruc should have been better positioned. The team have to collectively take blame as most were poor imo.

We'll still win the league but we sure are making it hard for ourselves.

 

Very hard fought game and I thought WGS called it right using the OF tactic of a physical team to win the battle then a team to win the game in the 2nd half even if we came in just short. Hearts are a very decent side, and playing them away is the hardest game in the SPL IMO, even harder than Dundee United who have more frailties. We were under the cosh in the 1st half and well on top in the 2nd. We were absolutely pummeling them in the last 10 minutes and unlucky not to win.

Sort of game you would be happy to take a draw. A really good game for the neutral and the sort of game where people who complain about the SPL and then complain when someone gives us a real game need to look at themselves. Only pity is its so tight at the top and dropping a point seems a much bigger deal than it usually should be. We are so much better than Rangers it is a bit weird that they seem impossible to shake off. Cnuts are 2-0 up already too. Anyway :

Boruc-6-not muxh to do
Hinkel-6-tought shift but did well
Naylor-7.5-Did well and its good to have an on form Naylor back. He is much more useful in attack than OD. He also defended really well today
Mick-5-Has slumped back to being really poor recently
Caldwell-6-did OK but not his best.
Loovens-7-looked good, best in air at the club, very big threat at corners
Brown-6-looked tired today
Crosas-6.5-Did pretty well in a really tight midfield where there was no space
Aidan-6-Ok at times but back to poor decision making. I would have brought Koki on 15 minutes earlier
Flood-3-looked totally out of his depth. To be fair he is a better player than this and he was probably rusty but I think he slipped down the replacing Brown waiting list today.
Naka-7- Did better and better as the game went on.
Skippy-6-Big drop off from his top form on Wednesday
JVOH-6-Not great but his last few games have been an improvement
Koki-6-short stint but looked decent

 

The whole team looked a bit tired today, especially our livewire players like Skippy, Broony, Aidan etc. It no coincidence that the guys who were better than normal like Naylor are fresher. Unfortunately Flood was an empty shirt too. Motherwell have pulled on back 1-2

 

totally agree. Apart from the goal we were under the cosh. I think it was 60-40 hearts in possession. That must have been reversed in the 2nd where we played better. Last 10 minutes I was sure we would score but Hearts are extremely good at closing down and defending. If they had been on their recent form all season they would be right up there with us and Rangers.

 

How can you say that when we've just chucked 2 points?

We were second to every ball and lucky to take a point, so the players he put in the middle of the park didn't win the battle.

The entire planet except the manager can see that Crosas / Brown is our best midfield partnership and we've scored 8 goals without reply in the last 2 games, yet he still changes it around and brings in Flood and puts our best defender in midfield for reasons that are beyond me.

If it's not broken don't fix it, why the * would Crosas be afraid of a midfield battle with Michael Stewart?

He mixes up the team for no reason and surprise * surprise, we drop points...

 

This crying about Naka not starting makes me laugh. WGS also gets it in the neck when he does play him and he gets bullied and disappears. This was the Ibrox template all over again - put on a tough team to soake up the violence then bring on the ball players. There are a lot of people who wanted Naka, Crosas, Brown, McGeady, Skippy etc but think of those midgets (average height about 5ft 7in) at corners.

 

how did spain manage to win the euro's without him? he's not the second * coming! sorry to have a go but nakamura is not * celtic

 

Remind me, who were we playing and where did we play those matches??

Was Caldwell the reason why Brown played crap? I dont think so!

 

We successfully limited them and their goal was a great FK. You forget how often WGS has been criticised for playing a midfield 4 with McGeady and Naka. Until the last few games many were still saying its impossible to play those 2 together and win the toughest away games. WGS just cant win. Nobody has any way of knowing what would have happened with the midfield 4 of the last few games and there is every possibility that they would have been posted missing as has often happened in these games where there is no room to play football until the opposition tire. Everyone always says if we played the other lineup we would have been far better but its all mystic meg stuff. Bottom line is he knows what he is doing, his record speaks for itself and he knows more about football than all of us put together. The problem today was the players individually were mainly a shade off form and tired looking and I think formation was not a big factor. Credit too to Hearts who have been blended into a very tough team, better than Dundee United IMO and if they dont sell players off I could see them finishing above Rangers next season.

 

Fair cop at the end of the day. Either side could have won it. We need to stop conceding stupid goals away from home and fast.

Flood and Crosas were very disappointing today IMO. Flood was totally out of the game and Crosas didn't seem to have his brain switched on.

 

Not a disaster, although we were pretty poor. We can be outfought too easily, when teams get stuck in to us it can put us off our game.

 

Whats your point?

When did we last gub teams 4-0 two games in a row? Don't you think those were 2 good performances?

It's not like we were playing AC Milan today.

People keep mentioning this 'physical battle' pish... who are these super duper physical Hearts midfielders that Crosas would have been so afraid of?

Oh yeah, Bruno Aguiar and Michael Stewart, too muscular giants of the game that would terrify any midfielder eh?

Our midfiled looked miles better when Crosas and Naka came on.

 

The fact that they came on 45+ minutes later had no bearing on matters??

 

I don't think 'succesfully limiting' mighty Hearts is much to shout about Gunt.

It's not mystic meg stuff either, it's common sense. If a team is winning you don't drop players to try and match a lesser opposition. You could almost here the collective groan across the country when fans saw the midfield and those fears were proved correct.

Your right when you say the team looked a bit tired, the early kick offs never seem to be a help for us, but they weren't helped by a baffling team selection IMO

 

Naka looked good but they had been worn down a bit by then and he was fresh. Also, Crosas did OK but he was as limited as everyone else due to the harassing tactics of Hearts. The whole team tends to get better as games go on because we are very fit and most other teams challenge to us is based on huge effort more than anything else an you can rarely keep that up for 90 minutes. We also used our rather good bench to keep us fresh and they couldnt do that. They were completely out of it and on the ropes in the last 10 minutes and we were unlucky not to score.