Celtic's Experiments Bring About An Impolsion
Article by James PayneClick here to follow e-Celtic on Twitter!
On Tuesday night Celtic lost 1-0 to Maribor of Slovenia at Celtic Park and in the process was, subject to the traditional bureaucratic errors by the opposing club, evicted from the Champions’ League. The Slovenes played much better than the hosts and deserved to go through. Not for the first time in its history Celtic failed to build on a good away leg and played dismally in what should be its strongest suit- playing at Celtic Park in front of a huge home support.
Understandably the players are getting it in the neck and with few exceptions the 14 players used last night looked woefully deficient in every aspect of the game. The defending at the goal Celtic lost was a catalogue of errors from the whole back four that was unworthy of an under eleven’s team whilst a total of 2 shots on target from 14 attempts on goal gives a big clue as to why Celtic failed to score. Kris Commons’ poor attempt on goal, a minute before Maribor scored, which drifted wide summed up the night. It was awful stuff from a currently awful team.
6 days ago it all looked different after that draw in Slovenia. Aside from the sloppy goal conceded that allowed the Slovenes to draw level Celtic produced an accomplished display that looked to build on the amazing good luck of Legia’s administrative mistake as well as a couple of good results in the first two Scottish Premiership matches. At the time few thought the incidents where Stefan Johansen first prevented a Van Dijk header going into net by getting in the way of the header and thereby diverting it to safety and then stumbled as he ran through on goal, would prove crucial but had either effort gone in and Celtic won the first match then I doubt Celtic would have been knocked out last night. The Slovenes looked a very ordinary side on their own park but clearly their coaching staff took more from the first leg than Celtic’s equivalent did.
Celtic’s downfall was not helped by the woeful display in Inverness last Saturday where Celtic lost 1-0 and in the process of matching last season’s number of lost league games failed to score in a league match for the first time since December 2012. Coach Ronny Deila left 10 players who had played in Slovenia out of this match giving them both extra time to recover for the match on Tuesday and to avoid the risk of injuries to more ‘key’ players for the ‘season defining’ Champions’ League match. Two seasons ago Neil Lennon employed the same ruse at the same ground before the 2nd Round Champions’ League game with Juventus and won 3-1 with the scratch team playing splendidly but Saturday’s team was a shambles – especially, ironically, after substitutions were made that reintroduced players who were supposed to be being ‘rested’.
Celtic and many of my fellow supporters seem to believe that the Scottish Premiership winners for season 2014/5 are already known and that the league has already been won by Celtic. It hasn’t and if Celtic continues in this complacent frame of mind then it could be in for a very rude awakening. Going to the ground of the team leading the league- having played one game more than Celtic- and not fielding anything approaching a full strength team shows contempt for the immediate opponent, the league generally and the thousands of fans who went north to follow the team. And it really worked a treat on Tuesday as well didn’t it?
Ronny Deila’s appointment is already looking to be an experiment that has failed. He has been outwitted completely by two coaches in the Champions’ League and presides over a team that is now playing with no enthusiasm, little in the way of spirit and with no confidence. His tactic of playing strikers on the wing and on their ‘wrong’ foot as was the case on Saturday [and in other matches this season] is a wrong one making the players concerned- in this instance Pukki and Griffiths- look totally uncomfortable, narrowing Celtic’s attacks and making it much easier for opponents, in this case a sprightly Inverness Caley Thistle, to defend their own goal. Eventually on Saturday and again last night Celtic was reduced to aiming hopeful crosses into the opposing penalty area and although Van Dijk did force a great save from the Maribor ‘keeper in the dying seconds there was precious little else for either the ICT or Maribor goalies to worry about. It was atrocious stuff that deserved what it got. Two defeats.
Deila was and remains a risky appointment. The fear was that he would find the transition from managing a small club to one with such a vast and vastly expectant support would be too great for him. That may well be the case but there is no evidence to date that he is any better a manager or coach than several managers operating in Scotland before he arrived. He did win the Norwegian league with Stromgodset which many acclaimed as being like a side like Partick Thistle or St Mirren winning the SPFL but given that there is no truly big club in Norway that achievement would be like those Scottish clubs triumphing in a league that did not contain Celtic. Deila had a reputation as a fitness fanatic but so far the team has looked no fitter than last season and if anything physically weaker most glaringly so in the home matches with Legia and Maribor who dominated Celtic physically as well as technically. He has chopped and changed the team at a bewildering rate- which has led to no continuity or momentum being established. Players like Stokes, Commons, Mulgrew, Ambrose and Izaguire are not world beaters but they are surely a lot better than they all look at the moment – three months ago they were the backbone of a team that lost one league match all season. Nothing- as in zero, nada, zilch, hee-haw- that Deila has done suggests he is the man for the job and I would not be surprised if he walks soon as he cannot be enjoying any of this. I would though expect that if the team stumbles in the league and Europa League (let’s just forget about the League Cup –we have only won that 6 times in the last 40 seasons) and more and more empty seats being visible at Celtic Park the board will take the easy option of punting him anyway.
That may well be the correct move should it be made but I am loath to give that lot credit for anything these days. It was they who chose Deila, they who have failed to provide the last manager with significant sums to truly strengthen his team and not a penny to the current one for the same purpose, they who have failed to make any meaningful comment on the Rangers debacle or the frankly ludicrous conclusions reached by Lord Nimmo-Smith or even have the courtesy to reply in even the blandest way to Legia Warsaw’s correspondence, a board that treats a section of its support with hostility and in the process helped turn Celtic Park into a stadium that is as noisy as the average morgue, a board that postpones league matches in January so that the club can participate in a meaningless competition in Turkey and which will not pay all of its employees the ‘living wage’. A board that is now failing Celtic as surely as that run by the Kellys and Whites did a generation ago.
A serious change in approach – philosophy even- by the Celtic board must start soon. That change can only come about if Dermot Desmond actually looks at what is happening and not just at the Balance Sheet shown in the PLC’s annual report. I will not be holding my breath on that score. For the meantime Celtic’s next match- a Saturday lunchtime trip to Dundee’s Dens Park suddenly looks a trickier prospect than it did a day ago. God knows what team Celtic will field. I suspect that Ronny Deila and his coaching crew don’t.
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