LEAP OF FAITH
Lennon hails his new Bhoys after the champions draw first blood against Rangers and put down early title marker
How Gerrard’s team selection played right into Celtic’s hands
RANGERS are coming. Rangers have closed the gap. Rangers will stop Nine-in-a-Row. Rangers are going to do this, that and the next thing. It’s all we’ve heard for weeks now.
But where were they yesterday when it mattered? Too many of them were posted missing and they looked like a poor imitation of the team who beat Celtic twice at Ibrox last season.
The most damning thing from a Rangers point of view is the fact that Celtic cruised to victory without being anywhere near their best.
They coasted along in second gear for large spells, with Rangers unable to ask any serious questions of their opponents.
Look at Celtic’s back four. Three of them — Christopher Jullien, Hatem Abd Elhamed and Boli Bolingoli — had no previous experience of Old Firm games.
Nir Bitton, meanwhile, hadn’t played against Rangers in over two years and was deputising as a makeshift centre-half.
Why, then, did Rangers sit off them so much and make it so comfortable?
Fraser Forster barely had a save to make and I bet the Celtic players couldn’t believe how easy it turned out to be.
In terms of his team selection and tactics, Gerrard had a howler. To start the match with five central midfielders squeezed into the system was a huge mistake.
It deprived Rangers of width and pace. A strange move when, by common consent, Bolingoli was viewed as Celtic’s weak link heading into the match.
If you were compiling a prematch scouting report, Celtic’s left-back area would have been the one above all others you’d have been looking to exploit.
The decision to start without a proper winger was unfathomable. It spoke to an approach from Gerrard which was far too cagey.
Gerrard said afterwards that the system had worked before. So what? That was last season. This is the here and now.
The decision to start Jermain Defoe ahead of Alfredo Morelos was another strange one. It can only go down as another rookie error from the Ibrox boss.
Gerrard said that he wanted the ‘freshness’ of Defoe after the efforts of Morelos against Legia Warsaw in the Europa League on Thursday night.
A 36-year-old offering more freshness than a 23-year-old? Really? Sorry, but that can’t be
right. Look at what they’ve both done over the past week.
Defoe started against St Mirren last weekend, with Morelos only playing the final 15 minutes. Morelos then played the full 90 against Legia, with Defoe an unused substitute.
So what’s Gerrard saying? After a fairly light shift in Paisley, is he honestly saying that Morelos is incapable of then playing two games in a row?
That’s a nonsense. I imagine a 23-year-old Gerrard would’ve been banging down his manager’s door at Liverpool if there was any suggestion he couldn’t play two games in four days.
Imagine the likes of Rafa Benitez benching Gerrard for a Merseyside derby after he scored a vital winner in Europe just a few days previously?
He’d be furious. Morelos would have been buzzing heading into yesterday after his heroics against Legia and his manager got it wrong to select Defoe ahead of him.
Overall, the game should serve as a major reality check for Rangers. If you look at the fine details, their start to the season has been over-hyped.
They needed a last-gasp winner at Kilmarnock. The 6-1 scoreline against Hibs was disingenuous in the sense that four goals came after Hibs went down to ten men.
They had to rely on a moment of magic from a free-kick to sneak past St Mirren 1-0. This offered a more accurate reflection of exactly where they are at the moment.
In terms of the pecking order, Celtic are still the team to beat — and that was with a makeshift team. Look at some of the names who weren’t involved: Kristoffer Ajer, Tom Rogic, Leigh Griffiths, Jozo Simunovic. They’ll all come back and improve this team.
Rangers were favourites going into the match and seemed very confident, but the reality is that they’re not as close to Celtic as they thought they were.
Their performance was so poor that, in the end, they just resorted to complete and utter desperation. Look at the Jordan Jones tackle on Moritz Bauer.
It was a disgraceful challenge. The SFA should slap an extra couple of games on to whatever ban he gets because he went in with the sole objective of trying to injure his opponent.
He had absolutely no interest in playing the ball.
There was clear intent to cause injury to a fellow professional, which is the lowest of the low. There was a real contrast between two of the centre-backs.
Jullien strolled through the match and looked a class act in the way that he dealt with things.
As for Connor Goldson, that’s the poorest game I’ve seen him have in a Rangers jersey. He was erratic in his decision-making and his distribution and he gave the ball away so cheaply in the build-up to Celtic’s opening goal.
With £3.5million Filip Helander waiting in the wings, Goldson might well face a spell out of the team after the international break.
In any case, Gerrard needs to find a settled starting XI. That’ll be key to finding the consistency they require to stop Celtic from disappearing out of sight.