Failure to spot clear signs of danger lies with EVERY PLAYER
EVEn with half a team missing along with their manager, Rangers took one look at ‘Angeball’ and hoofed it halfway back across the city.
For all the progress that Celtic have made in recent weeks, for all the flair and attacking football, they are still plagued by a ruinous inability to do the basics.
I’m not talking about playing out from the back and the way they sometimes give the ball away in dangerous areas. That’s a different issue altogether.
Listen, we know that Stephen Welsh isn’t Franco Baresi. nor is Carl Starfelt likely to start striding out from the back like Franz Beckenbauer any time soon.
Given the expansive way in which Ange Postecoglou is asking the team to play, most Celtic fans accept there will be the odd nervy moment when hearts are in mouths.
But, again, that’s not the issue here. I’m talking about a collective failure to sense danger and deal with it appropriately. It’s something which the players have to take responsibility for.
We saw it in the defeat to AZ Alkmaar last midweek when
Welsh and Joe Hart got themselves in an almighty mess for the Dutch side’s first goal.
Then, when AZ made it 2-1, Starfelt tripped over his own feet as he shanked the ball into his own net. It should have been a routine clearance for any competent centre-back.
Which takes us to Ibrox yesterday. Between them, what were Starfelt and Welsh doing when Filip Helander headed the only goal of the game?
Helander is 6ft 3ins tall. Or, to put it another way, he was the tallest Rangers player on the pitch yesterday.
Why on earth, then, was he allowed to run in unchallenged at the back post? From a Celtic point of view, that’s absolutely criminal.
If you look at the replays, Helander is standing at the edge of the box completely unmarked when Borna Barisic delivers the corner kick.
He then gets the jump on Starfelt at the back post, which makes it look like his fault. But it had been Welsh who had been marking Helander previously at set-pieces.
Yes, Starfelt should have been stronger. But Welsh also has to shoulder the responsibility of not picking up his man, hence my point about it being a collective failure.
It’s bound to be a source of huge frustration for Celtic fans because their team had the better of the game and probably just edged it in terms of clear-cut chances.
Certainly, when Kyogo Furuhashi (right) squared the ball to Odsonne Edouard midway through the first half, you were just waiting on the net to bulge for 1-0.
But it ended up being a horrible miss from the French striker, whilst Kyogo also had a couple of really decent chances in the second half.
Edouard could well be on his way out of the club before tomorrow’s transfer deadline. Given what Postecoglou said afterwards, it’s clear that Kyogo is now the first-choice striker through the middle.
I don’t really see the two of them playing in the same team together. So are Celtic just going to let Edouard sit on the bench and run down his contract? That would be crazy.
The better option now is to take whatever money you can get for him and move him on because there’s no doubt Celtic now look a far better team with Kyogo playing through the middle.
Having started on the left yesterday, the little Japanese striker caused Rangers problems once he moved centrally with his pace and movement.
Of course, there has to be an element of realism in all of this. Ultimately, Celtic lost the game and the result will sting for a couple of weeks as we now head into the international break.
But I do believe that when he sits down and analyses the game, Postecoglou will take a lot of positives from what he saw.
His team have gone away to Ibrox and dominated possession of the ball. Not many teams do that to Rangers on their own turf.
In terms of the performance level and chances created, this was a significant improvement on most of the Old Firm games last season for Celtic. They are getting better and are closing the gap on Rangers. But clearly they are by no means the finished article just yet. They’ve played some thrilling attacking football at times in recent weeks. But, over the course of a full season, they will also need to show a bit of backbone. Look at Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United side of the mid-90s; a joy to watch, played free-flowing football, scored goals by the bucketload, and were dubbed ‘The Entertainers’. But, ultimately, they didn’t win anything. Too often in big games, they couldn’t keep the back door shut at the other end. That’s the sort of path Celtic are on at the moment. It’s too easy for teams to stick a knife in ‘Angeball’ and burst the whole thing. Celtic’s ability to change that will now determine their chances of overhauling Rangers across the duration of this season.