In retrospect, I think that having a week off hindered us rather than helped us.
A week’s training is no substitute for a match.
Perhaps AP should have arranged a bounce game midweek to get the players sharp.
The team has become accustomed to playing a lot of games in a short period of time.
So perhaps the time off was detrimental.
Just a thought.
Does anyone agree or disagree with my point of view?
1 Like
That wasn’t the reason why we were more tired than them, even though they played 120 minutes on Thursday. The reason was we lost possession time after time. Nothing tires you more than having to work twice as hard as your opponent to win back the ball.
In the 3-0 game Rangers stood off us and they got a walloping.
In the Ibrox game they reverted to type. The game they developed under Gerrard is based on not allowing the back line easy possession, going man for man in midfield and not allowing the midfielder on the ball to turn. Teams end up going long in desperation and the back line is big and good in the air, so they quickly win the ball back.
It was working at Ibrox. But McGregor’s great driving run into the box tore up the script and then tremendous defending by Carter-Vickers and Starfelt saved us. This time we got found out. There needs to be some serious rethinking for the game at Parkhead.
We need to sort out what is happening when playing out from the back. Stop the suicide tikki-taka. This is more angst-ball than Ange-ball. It is totally playing into their hands. The ball is either lost in our half of the pitch or it needs to be lumped up the park and is lost in their half of the pitch. Our game is based on McGregor starting attacks. McGregor must take more responsibility here for taking the ball from the centre halves. The centre halves need to be trained to play through the press to McGregor or O’Riley/Turnbull. The whole team has to be more diagonal and dynamic in possession. Rangers are not beating decent teams in Europe through sheer luck. If the positioning and passing is totally predictable they will pick us off.
We can’t let Hatate’s incredible half-hour in the 3-0 game blind us to the fact that he is not the answer in these games, certainly not yet. O’Riley and Turnbull must start at Parkhead, they are much better able to cope with the way Rangers are allowed to play against us, with Rogic being an option for later in the game.
We have to be more aware of the way they play. Time and again they played long cross-field balls to Tavernier and he had all the time he wanted to collect and bring the ball under control before setting up an attack. We allowed Maeda to spend the whole game running around like a headless chicken chasing their back line (which is no use unless another player supports it by cutting off the passing option) when we could have used him to stop the supply to Tavernier, who is one of their most effective players going forward. This is something Maeda could do well and could lead to him being able to set up attacks.
Madden was astonishing. I’ve never seen a game in which players were allowed to blatantly wrap their arms around another player so often without being penalised. But Celtic have always had to beat Rangers and their referee. To win at Parkhead we need to be so much better than Sunday.
1 Like
That’s my point, if we had played a midweek bounce game, I think we would have been sharper in every department.