Celtic FC - Half Term Report
Article by James Payne
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A couple of months ago before I went ‘off- air’ I said that I thought the period following the then upcoming international break would prove crucial in assessing Ronny Deila’s worth as a Celtic manager. Celtic’s two previous ‘foreign’ coaches had enjoyed mediocre starts to their first season with improvement only really coming once the days got shorter than the nights. Celtic had made a poor start – one in which we had contrived to get knocked out of the Champions League not once but twice- and had made our worst start to a league campaign this century.
As we wait to move into 2015 Celtic sit on top of the league. We have qualified for the last 32 of the Europa League, the last 16 of the Scottish Cup and the semi-finals of the League Cup as well. It looks good and I suppose it might turn out well but I remain uneasy.
Celtic’s lead in the League is 2 points and having been six points behind before that international break that is satisfactory but a defeat at Tannadice and a truly woeful goal-less draw at home to Ross County have indicated that the team is not as invincible domestically as it was beginning to look. In fact Celtic was a touch unlucky to lose to Dundee United in a match where the visitors hit the woodwork several times, had a goal disallowed for offside that appeared to be clearly onside* and largely dominated a pretty good match but against that several of the performances were mediocre during an eight game winning run that took Celtic into a six point lead before that game on Tayside.
The European run has been even less convincing than the league one. Celtic took 7 points from 9 from the first three matches to sit joint top with Red Bull Salzburg but the two home victories against Dinamo Zagreb and Astra of Romania were by single goal margins and owed much to the excellence of Craig Gordon in goals- it was no exaggeration to say that Celtic could have been sitting on zero points after those first three games with the home match with Astra making particularly grim viewing. Only one point was taken from the next three matches but the Romanians and the Croats traded points so Celtic got through. The performances were better in the last three games – a poor decision cost Celtic a deserved win in Romania- but the team looked as horribly weak defensively as in the Legia fiascos.
The team is short of quality in all areas of the field except goalkeeper where Craig Gordon has proved to be the one player of genuine high class in the squad. In 47 years of supporting Celtic this is the first time I can remember where our goalie is our best player.
I liked Jason Denayer our loan signing from Manchester City before he got injured in November and Virgil Van Dijk and Mikael Lustig are potentially very good players when they, respectively, bother to look interested and match fit but the other defenders all look to have had better days. The young English right back, Darnell Fisher, impressed last season but after picking up a couple of injuries he has appeared only once this season- when he came on in Zagreb- but he might worth having another look at as must the Irishman Eoghan O’Connell especially if Denayer is out for much longer and Efe Ambrose continues to struggle as he has all season. At left back Emilio Izzaguire still tries hard but his crossing is erratic whilst defensively he is frequently out of position.
The midfield of Scott Brown, Stefan Johansen and either Nir Bitton or Charlie Mulgrew is reasonably good but none of these players scores many goals and none can make telling passes regularly. The best winger by far is James Forrest but he is rarely fit and inconsistent when he does play. The other youngster, Callum McGregor, started brightly but after weeks of this left footed player playing on the right his form deserted him. The other wingers, Wakaso Mubarak and Aleksandr Tonev, have made no more impact on the field than Derk Boerrigter did last season ( or early in this). Celtic cannot seriously be considering holding onto either of these players.
Of the attackers, only one, Swedish loan signing John Guidetti has made it into double figures for goals scored. The Man City player looked impressive when he first came but he is dreadfully out of form now and even when he was in good form he missed at least one sitter per game. I remain unconvinced that Celtic should seek to make his signing a permanent one though in fairness he is a lot better than last season’s striking flops Teemu Pukki and Amido Balde. The Serb Stefan Scepovic came on the last day of the transfer window in August after seeming reluctant to sign for much of that month. At this moment quite why Celtic was so keen to sign him remains a mystery. The one thing in his favour- actually quite a big thing for a forward- is that he does often get into position to score but the downside is that he usually misses and often embarrassingly badly when doing so. Anthony Stokes has chipped in with a few goals but looks unhappy playing at inside left and Leigh Griffiths has hardly featured [and in the process become a much better player in many fans’ opinions than he actually is] whilst last season’s top scorer Kris Commons is clearly not a player who fits into Deila’s favoured formation. I am not a great fan of that formation I must admit but Commons has rarely looked as sharp as last season when he has played. It is a shame that his Celtic career seems to be fizzling out.
The team overall is short of quality and is, frankly, as poor to watch on many occasions as any Celtic team, since Lou Macari was in charge. The same formation is used every week and our main attacking ploy is to get our full backs to the goal-line. The nominal wingers are often played on their ‘wrong’ foot [Celtic have no players truly comfortable on both feet] and even Forrest when played on his preferred right wing is encouraged to cut inside and leave the traditional wing play stuff like beating the back and getting to the bye-line to a full back who cannot cross accurately on a consistent basis. The full backs also have the added problem that there is frequently nobody there to cross it to. Celtic play with only one out-and-out forward [usually Guidetti]. So far Deila has shown us only Plan A and it’s hardly a masterly one.
It is not all bad. The resilience of the team seems to be returning as manifested in a gritty win over Aberdeen to go top of the league and there have even been some good performances. The best I thought was the one-nil win at Motherwell back in early December when things clicked from the off and Celtic scored inside the first six minutes. But that day, like the loss to Dundee United, showed the other great failing of this team and that is that it misses an awful lot of chances. This would seem to me to be entirely the fault of the players. Generally in my time Celtic have been good at scoring goals but Commons aside there does not seem to be any player on our books who is confident in front of goal especially one-on-one.
For a while during that good run of results Celtic looked to be about to ‘click’. Deila has to get that back and quickly. There are opportunities out there for Celtic and for the manager to truly win over the unconverted. But there are real potential calamities out there.
That the league championship is not over bar the shouting is in itself worth celebrating but as the principal reason for that state of affairs has been the weaker form of Celtic – although Aberdeen do look a bit stronger despite their two narrow defeats to us- then the prospect of an exciting title run-in becomes one to fear slightly. There are worrying signs that the penny has not dropped within both the Club and the supporters that this league is going to have to be won not gifted to us.
The Scottish Cup is still in its infancy and the next round at Dundee will be tricky but more intriguing just now is the semi-final of the League Cup which sees us playing the new version of Rangers (assuming that club does not go bust). The new Rangers are currently in disarray on and off the pitch and their 4-0 defeat at Easter Road on Saturday highlighted just how badly things are on the playing side. There will be a lot of claptrap in the media about how great it is to see the ‘Old Firm’ games back even though they are poisonous affairs that bring out the very worst in too many people and the reality that Rangers is a new entity will be sloughed over but in truth if Celtic keep their wits about them then the Bhoys should win comfortably. Whether the manager and players will keep their wits about them is not certain. I will be relieved when this particular match is over but I am not sure I shall be celebrating. Ronny Deila’s team has played too badly, too often for this one to be as cut and dried as it should be.
The European campaign will probably come to an end with the tie against Internazionale [Celtic has not knocked an Italian team out of Europe since, er, 1970] but after the travails of this season’s European experience getting to this stage must be looked on in a favourable light. And it is not as though we have never beaten the Nerazzuri before is it?
*The one issue may have been that Scepovic [who netted] may have been offside earlier in the move though in that case the linesman really ought to have had his flag up earlier.
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A couple of months ago before I went ‘off- air’ I said that I thought the period following the then upcoming international break would prove crucial in assessing Ronny Deila’s worth as a Celtic manager. Celtic’s two previous ‘foreign’ coaches had enjoyed mediocre starts to their first season with improvement only really coming once the days got shorter than the nights. Celtic had made a poor start – one in which we had contrived to get knocked out of the Champions League not once but twice- and had made our worst start to a league campaign this century.
As we wait to move into 2015 Celtic sit on top of the league. We have qualified for the last 32 of the Europa League, the last 16 of the Scottish Cup and the semi-finals of the League Cup as well. It looks good and I suppose it might turn out well but I remain uneasy.
Celtic’s lead in the League is 2 points and having been six points behind before that international break that is satisfactory but a defeat at Tannadice and a truly woeful goal-less draw at home to Ross County have indicated that the team is not as invincible domestically as it was beginning to look. In fact Celtic was a touch unlucky to lose to Dundee United in a match where the visitors hit the woodwork several times, had a goal disallowed for offside that appeared to be clearly onside* and largely dominated a pretty good match but against that several of the performances were mediocre during an eight game winning run that took Celtic into a six point lead before that game on Tayside.
The European run has been even less convincing than the league one. Celtic took 7 points from 9 from the first three matches to sit joint top with Red Bull Salzburg but the two home victories against Dinamo Zagreb and Astra of Romania were by single goal margins and owed much to the excellence of Craig Gordon in goals- it was no exaggeration to say that Celtic could have been sitting on zero points after those first three games with the home match with Astra making particularly grim viewing. Only one point was taken from the next three matches but the Romanians and the Croats traded points so Celtic got through. The performances were better in the last three games – a poor decision cost Celtic a deserved win in Romania- but the team looked as horribly weak defensively as in the Legia fiascos.
The team is short of quality in all areas of the field except goalkeeper where Craig Gordon has proved to be the one player of genuine high class in the squad. In 47 years of supporting Celtic this is the first time I can remember where our goalie is our best player.
I liked Jason Denayer our loan signing from Manchester City before he got injured in November and Virgil Van Dijk and Mikael Lustig are potentially very good players when they, respectively, bother to look interested and match fit but the other defenders all look to have had better days. The young English right back, Darnell Fisher, impressed last season but after picking up a couple of injuries he has appeared only once this season- when he came on in Zagreb- but he might worth having another look at as must the Irishman Eoghan O’Connell especially if Denayer is out for much longer and Efe Ambrose continues to struggle as he has all season. At left back Emilio Izzaguire still tries hard but his crossing is erratic whilst defensively he is frequently out of position.
The midfield of Scott Brown, Stefan Johansen and either Nir Bitton or Charlie Mulgrew is reasonably good but none of these players scores many goals and none can make telling passes regularly. The best winger by far is James Forrest but he is rarely fit and inconsistent when he does play. The other youngster, Callum McGregor, started brightly but after weeks of this left footed player playing on the right his form deserted him. The other wingers, Wakaso Mubarak and Aleksandr Tonev, have made no more impact on the field than Derk Boerrigter did last season ( or early in this). Celtic cannot seriously be considering holding onto either of these players.
Of the attackers, only one, Swedish loan signing John Guidetti has made it into double figures for goals scored. The Man City player looked impressive when he first came but he is dreadfully out of form now and even when he was in good form he missed at least one sitter per game. I remain unconvinced that Celtic should seek to make his signing a permanent one though in fairness he is a lot better than last season’s striking flops Teemu Pukki and Amido Balde. The Serb Stefan Scepovic came on the last day of the transfer window in August after seeming reluctant to sign for much of that month. At this moment quite why Celtic was so keen to sign him remains a mystery. The one thing in his favour- actually quite a big thing for a forward- is that he does often get into position to score but the downside is that he usually misses and often embarrassingly badly when doing so. Anthony Stokes has chipped in with a few goals but looks unhappy playing at inside left and Leigh Griffiths has hardly featured [and in the process become a much better player in many fans’ opinions than he actually is] whilst last season’s top scorer Kris Commons is clearly not a player who fits into Deila’s favoured formation. I am not a great fan of that formation I must admit but Commons has rarely looked as sharp as last season when he has played. It is a shame that his Celtic career seems to be fizzling out.
The team overall is short of quality and is, frankly, as poor to watch on many occasions as any Celtic team, since Lou Macari was in charge. The same formation is used every week and our main attacking ploy is to get our full backs to the goal-line. The nominal wingers are often played on their ‘wrong’ foot [Celtic have no players truly comfortable on both feet] and even Forrest when played on his preferred right wing is encouraged to cut inside and leave the traditional wing play stuff like beating the back and getting to the bye-line to a full back who cannot cross accurately on a consistent basis. The full backs also have the added problem that there is frequently nobody there to cross it to. Celtic play with only one out-and-out forward [usually Guidetti]. So far Deila has shown us only Plan A and it’s hardly a masterly one.
It is not all bad. The resilience of the team seems to be returning as manifested in a gritty win over Aberdeen to go top of the league and there have even been some good performances. The best I thought was the one-nil win at Motherwell back in early December when things clicked from the off and Celtic scored inside the first six minutes. But that day, like the loss to Dundee United, showed the other great failing of this team and that is that it misses an awful lot of chances. This would seem to me to be entirely the fault of the players. Generally in my time Celtic have been good at scoring goals but Commons aside there does not seem to be any player on our books who is confident in front of goal especially one-on-one.
For a while during that good run of results Celtic looked to be about to ‘click’. Deila has to get that back and quickly. There are opportunities out there for Celtic and for the manager to truly win over the unconverted. But there are real potential calamities out there.
That the league championship is not over bar the shouting is in itself worth celebrating but as the principal reason for that state of affairs has been the weaker form of Celtic – although Aberdeen do look a bit stronger despite their two narrow defeats to us- then the prospect of an exciting title run-in becomes one to fear slightly. There are worrying signs that the penny has not dropped within both the Club and the supporters that this league is going to have to be won not gifted to us.
The Scottish Cup is still in its infancy and the next round at Dundee will be tricky but more intriguing just now is the semi-final of the League Cup which sees us playing the new version of Rangers (assuming that club does not go bust). The new Rangers are currently in disarray on and off the pitch and their 4-0 defeat at Easter Road on Saturday highlighted just how badly things are on the playing side. There will be a lot of claptrap in the media about how great it is to see the ‘Old Firm’ games back even though they are poisonous affairs that bring out the very worst in too many people and the reality that Rangers is a new entity will be sloughed over but in truth if Celtic keep their wits about them then the Bhoys should win comfortably. Whether the manager and players will keep their wits about them is not certain. I will be relieved when this particular match is over but I am not sure I shall be celebrating. Ronny Deila’s team has played too badly, too often for this one to be as cut and dried as it should be.
The European campaign will probably come to an end with the tie against Internazionale [Celtic has not knocked an Italian team out of Europe since, er, 1970] but after the travails of this season’s European experience getting to this stage must be looked on in a favourable light. And it is not as though we have never beaten the Nerazzuri before is it?
*The one issue may have been that Scepovic [who netted] may have been offside earlier in the move though in that case the linesman really ought to have had his flag up earlier.
© e-Football 2014 All rights reserved no part of this document or this website may be reproduced without consent of e-Football
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