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

Zero protection in midfield now. Mate, before yesterday we had conceded 4 league goals in 18 games. It’s not as if Schmeichel has been having to make save after save in games either. There’s some amount of utter drivel being posted after yesterday like, but that one is right up there.

 

You do realise we play against teams usually camped in their own box 80% of the time? McGregor isn’t having to do much protecting in the vast majority of games.

The games where teams do go for us - like the ones I mentioned previously - our midfield is often wide open, exposing our defence.

Hibs - 14 shots
Killie - 18 shots
Zagreb - 11 shots
Huns - 15 shots and 23 shots

All in the last 2 months.

Hibs and Killie - we had 75% and 66% of the ball. Not a chance should we be conceding that number of shots given how little of the ball the opposition were seeing.

That quite blatantly demonstrates how open we were to the counter. Not sure how much more simple to make it.

Thankfully, domestically at least, most teams aren’t good enough to take advantage of it. Plus we have CCV, Trusty and Schmeichel.

 

So the bigger picture is now to highlight a handful of games instead of looking at it over a 6 month or 1 year period. We’ve played mostly the same teams for over a century now, and this year we have one of the best defensive records in our history domestically. But forget all that, because we faced loads eh shots in a few games. Christ almighty.

 

What the * does a 1 year period have to do with anything?

People are highlighting issues in the team in the last couple of months - which are completely valid and blindingly obvious.

Whatever we did last January has zero relevance to right now.

 

Haha. Because you are talking about a bigger picture then highlighting a few games and all of a sudden that is the big picture. It’s * nonsense.

 

Right so Man City fans should be buzzing right now because of the “bigger picture”? Don’t talk pish.

What happened 12 months ago, 6 months ago etc has * all relevance to now.

A few months ago we beat the huns 3-0. Yesterday we lost 3-0 and it could have been 6.

“Bigger picture” though.

 

They are set up with a 4231 essentially a 5 man midfield which allows them press our 3 man mid easily, basically taking out Maeda Kuhn and Kyogo. They sometimes had 3 players round 1 man. The last 2 games were like this it's obvious that this needs looked at.

 

Sorry, I didn’t realise we had lost as many games recently as Man City. Aww wait, we’ve no. So what a * pointless argument that is. I’m talking about us. The bigger picture is surely based on the past 6 months or year or so of what we’ve done. Not a handful of games where we have faced loads of shots.

 

Only positive I can see from it is hopefully Brendan gets the players he wants in and the board back him to the full extent. Never seen a game where the full 11 play bad so I can’t understand what the * happened to them all yesterday

 

You’re actually making my point for me, come to think of it.

Now I may be wrong but I don’t think a year ago we were conceding 15+ shots against Killie and Hibs. Or 20+ against the huns.

So wouldn’t you agree that the fact we are now is a bit of a cause for concern and proves something isn’t functioning the way it should?

Because you know, football changes. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to ignore the facts once again.

 

Here’s some stats I found on Twitter that tell you how bad we were yesterday:

Celtic posted an xG of 0.07 yesterday:
- Lowest since Atletico Madrid away (10-men after 6mins)
- Lowest in an Old Firm since xG was captured

Root cause of this?

Our inability to play out from the back under pressure due to players simply not being good enough. Scales, Taylor, McGregor and Hatate the worst of them all.

Rodgers failing to change it from the Cup Final and being too arrogant to change it at HT yesterday.

Zero Plan B for when midfield can’t get on the ball and attackers isolated.

 

Right, so should we ignore the amount of goals conceded and just look at the shots now? Because I’m certain that this season is one of the best defensive records we have had in our entire history. So what’s the bigger picture? The record that shows us we’ve been very solid defensively over the course of this season so far? Or is the bigger picture a few games where we have faced loads of shots?

 

Because our goalkeeper and centre backs, for the most part, have been very good this season.

Our protection from midfield, not so much.

That’s my whole point.

 

But Schmeichel hasn’t been making loads of saves this season really. In fact, at the start of the season I can barely recall him making a stop. That isn’t just down to centre halfs. The whole team as a defensive unit has been very good for the majority of this season. Yesterday was an exception. Our players completely froze. If it continues to happen regularly then I’ll be on here digging out our coaching, but I’ll hold back on it for now.

 

That’s why I was mentioning the games over the last couple of months. Wasn’t to pick and choose.

It’s noticeably become a bit of a problem in certain games where teams come at us and it’s really started since November time after the international break. We sometimes struggle against high pressing teams or teams who are quick on the counter.

 

In some games it has, but it’s not been consistent I don’t think. That’s football though. I’d expect a drop off a bit due to the amount of games we’ve played. I still don’t think it’s a major concern at this stage.

 

This game won't define our season. It stings because it's a loss against our rivals but we know we didn't turn up. Hopefully it's a kick in the * and we can go on a long unbeaten run now.

After such a good season we shouldn't throw the team under the bus just yet. A bad day all round but it happens. Let them have their moment.

 

Im not bothered about it because they were due to beat us at some point, Clement was never going to go 7/8/9 games without beating us, Rodgers never going to go to 25 games with 1 loss or anything. I think they'd only won 1 out of 10 going into it and even that was a post split dead rubber.

Felt watching it that it's that bad a disaster no matter what happened we'd have got beat. Just due to happen.

 

In hindsight it’s difficult psychologically to keep them under the cosh for so long.
I think it’s fair to say that after it’s all said and done a fair percentage of us are not too bothered considering the grand scheme of things.
This group tends to react well when this happens, we need to be consistently good rather than awesome one day and dogshit the next. Want to see players doing what they are good at such as hatate on the turn, he needs to play with more confidence. At our best we are very strong but we absolutely need to address our weaknesses.

 

When no fans are at the stadium we've only managed to win once. So no suprise we never this time when there fresh off a cup final defeat to us so would have extra motivation. All while we've half a team recovering from a sick bug.

11 points ahead at this time of year with extra European games coming, and every person here will always take that everytime. Different story next time we play. Probably have the result fully reversed .