BLIP CAUSED BY A DIP IN STANDARDS
Celtic’s sky-high standards have slipped and Rodgers must act fast to stop a setback turning into something more serious
THERE’S a saying that sprung to mind yesterday as Celtic’s long run of invincibility was crashing into a brick wall at Tynecastle.
It goes something along the lines of “99 per cent of all statistics only tell 49 per cent of the story”.
That was certainly the case yesterday as Brendan Rodgers and his side were finally taken down amid a blizzard of facts and figures as this unsurpassed period of domestic dominance – the likes of which British football may never see again – came to the most dramatic of sudden ends.
Let’s start with the most significant stat of the day which actually did paint a fairly accurate picture of what went on in the capital yesterday lunchtime. The one that read: Hearts 4, Celtic 0.
Because not for one moment was the home side undeserving of this victory. They were worth each of their four goals and very possibly even more than that. Celtic’s performance, on the other hand, was as close to woeful as Rodgers has witnessed at any time in his 18 months at the helm.
His defence seemed strangely hellbent on self-destructing from the moment Craig Gordon suffered his first attack of the jitters and very nearly handed an opening goal to Kyle Lafferty by dithering with the ball at his feet inside his own six-yard box.
That Gordon did at least keep the score down by pulling off a superb reflex save to deny David Milinkovic shortly after young Harry Cochrane had fired Hearts into the lead is really neither here nor there in the final analysis.
Lafferty had doubled the lead within five minutes in any case and Milinkovic was still able to help himself to a double after half-time – his first after a Jozo Simunovic blunder and the second from the spot after another brain-melt moment from Gordon.
No, there was nothing much for Rodgers to salvage from a wretched 90 minutes other than the consolation of knowing that this has never happened to him before – not on this side of the border at any rate.
Which brings the next major statistic into play. The one that reads: Played 70, lost one. Now this provides the overriding story of the Rodgers era. Yesterday’s defeat means his rate of losses has risen from zero per cent to 1.428 per cent.
No wonder then the boss made such a point of gathering his players around him on the pitch after the final whistle because these are the kind of numbers that defy logic never mind define this period of unrivalled superiority.
By bringing them together in a huddle Rodgers was publicly displaying his immense pride in these players and rightly so. What they have achieved over the last 585 days will most probably never be matched let alone surpassed by any other team.
But, now that this record run is over, it’s what happens over the coming days and weeks that will really matter to Rodgers because the most recent statistics also point to a sharp decline in Celtic’s standards and a trend that must worry the manager a great deal more than a single defeat in 70 matches.
At this point it is important to remember that when numbers can be crunched and twisted to such an extent they become a distortion of reality, it is better to ignore them completely than to waste a single moment dwelling on them.
But, even so, it’s written down there now in black and white. An undeniable fact. The one that reads: Rodgers has amassed fewer points from his first 18 league games of this season than Ronny Deila did two years ago.
Granted, the mere mention of it feels like an act of heresy. In the real world there is no comparison at all to be drawn between Rodgers and Ronny. That is why Celtic’s reaction to yesterday’s setback will be fascinating.
Rodgers himself says it is time now to press the reset button and this is precisely what will be required if his team is to return to the sort of standards it hit for itself in his first season in charge.
This time one year ago they had dropped just two points of the first 54 available to them.
This season they’ve allowed 13 to slip through their fingers already. That is one more than Deila allowed to hit the floor back in the opening, error-strewn five months of 2015.
It could be that the extra burden of lumping this unbeaten run around with them has weighed too heavily on the shoulders of Celtic’s players this season. That now, by pressing the reset button, they will also be unshackled.
But Rodgers too has some issues to address and not just the obvious defensive lapses that skewered Celtic
It could be the extra burden of lumping around this unbeaten record around has weighed heavily
yesterday. On the contrary, perhaps one of the manager’s most pressing problems is to be found at the other end of the field.
Rodgers himself has previously stressed Celtic cannot carry three strikers at one time.
The Hoops boss went on record as saying so during the Champions League qualifiers in the summer at a time when neither Moussa Dembele nor Leigh Griffiths were available to face Rosenborg.
But, curiously, before going on to complete the loan deal that brought Odsonne Edouard to Glasgow from Paris St-Germain.
The 19-year-old French striker was then placed in cold storage until his recent re-emergence as a contender for a starting place which has shoved Griffiths on to the sidelines. Before leading Celtic’s line yesterday the Scotland striker had started just one of their previous 10 games.
In fact, in the other nine Griffiths was given a combined total of 63 minutes of football from the subs bench – scoring one goal in a 21-minute, matchwinning cameo at Ross County.
Is it any wonder he looked ring-rusty yesterday when Rodgers turned to him at Tynecastle?
At his sharpest, Griffiths may well have buried the chance James Forrest foraged for him just 13 minutes into the match.
Instead, he slipped while blazing it over the bar and before too much longer Celtic’s defence was being swamped by a Hearts stampede. An early nerve settler from Celtic might have prevented all of it.
So Rodgers must decide how much longer he runs with this three-into-one experiment which appears, on the face of it, to have been designed in order to convince Edouard he represents Celtic’s future.
In some ways that’s shrewd man-management from Rodgers who knows Dembele might not remain at Celtic until the end of next month never mind the end of the current campaign.
But, after yesterday’s defeat, it’s the here and the now that matters most. There might be no realistic and credible threat to Celtic’s title. But Rodgers can’t run the risk of allowing a blip to develop into a pattern nonetheless.