Brown rues Parkhead side’s familiar failing
CELTIC captain Scott Brown has admitted the Parkhead club must learn to defend set pieces properly if they want to rediscover the form that made them Scottish football’s dominant force.
Brown and his team-mates crashed to an ignominious 1-0 defeat to bottom-placed Premiership club Ross County in Dingwall on Sunday evening after they conceded a secondhalf free-kick.
The quadruple treble winners had dominated the match at the Global Energy Stadium and created a raft of scoring chances their manager Neil Lennon afterwards described as “giltedged”.
However, they failed to deal with Harry Paton’s delivery into their penalty box in the 71st minute or prevent Jordan White from getting on the end of it and heading beyond Scott Bain.
It has been a familiar tale for the defending Scottish champions in their ill-fated 2020/21 campaign – they have let in numerous goals at corners and free-kicks in the past seven months.
They are now 18 points behind their Rangers in the top flight table and their city rivals can clinch the title at the Old Firm game at Parkhead on March 21 – possibly even earlier.
Brown believes that Celtic must do better both defensively and up front if they are to get back to the level they were at before their calamitous campaign.
“Ross County had a game plan, stuck to it and they fought well throughout the 90 minutes,” he said. “We could have squeezed the game. It was a slack decision from us. It’s small margins of error and we’ve got to take responsibility for that.
“When you go up there, it’s always a tough game. We went up there at the start of the season and we didn’t play too well and won 5-0. At the end of the day, you’d probably take that [rather than] us playing well, playing nice football and not scoring the goals and losing a set-piece at the end.
“I thought we defended quite well throughout the game but it’s one set play and it’s those small margins in football that, you lose concentration for a few seconds, and he scores a header
at the back post and gets a run on the lads. It’s something that’s pretty much been throughout our whole season.
“We need to look at it and right it tomorrow. It sums the season up.”
Odsonne Edouard, Ryan Christie and David Turnbull all squandered excellent scoring opportunities in the first-half at the Global Energy Stadium and County goalkeeper Ross Laidlaw pulled off two outstanding saves from Christie and Mohamed Elyounoussi in the second. However, Brown feels that Celtic’s play in the final third wasn’t of an acceptable standard either.
“Every team misses chances, but we need to create a few more chances as well,” he said. “The chances we created were from their mistakes. We need to play better as a team. We just need to make sure the final ball is spot on and put on a plate for somebody.
“You go late, into the 91st, 92nd minute. We’re peppering the goal and we’re forcing mistakes and errors. To be fair, we still did that. It just wasn’t clear-cut chances that were falling for us, it was half-chances and we maybe didn’t do enough in the final third.”
Celtic’s hopes of completing 10-in-a-row ended long ago, but Brown is determined for them to finish a wretched campaign on a high with a winning run and is keen to put the County loss behind them against Aberdeen on Saturday.
“We’ll take it one game at a time and we look forward to playing again this week,” he said. “We’ve got to focus on that game and make sure that we’re ready.”