Celtic Play Some Good Football – Patience Required

I’ve just read Ralph’s doom and gloom in the ETims Diary about last night’s game and felt compelled to write a riposte to his hawf cut words.

Firstly, Ralph lives in Stoke. If that’s not enough to make you depressed God knows what is.

Secondly and far more importantly. I get disappointment and frustration (I’ve been married for over 20 years!) when supporting Celtic, especially in Europe. Those of an older ilk will remember Partizan Belgrade and Jackie Dziekanowski shagging Haz, erm, scoring 4 goals as we lost 5-4 due to go out on aggregate on away goals after conceding a last minute goal at Celtic Park. My mates still not forgiven Joe Miller when clean through on goal to make it 6-4!

Ronny Deila’s Celtic team feels a bit like those teams of yore that Billy McNeill and Davie Hay managed. Good going forward, play good football but quite shite at defending as a team in Europe.

Where I fundamentally disagree with the old Stoke whingebag is his misguided thoughts that there were no positives from the 2-2 draw with Fenerbahce. In fact, his comments were we were “bloody awful”.

Ach, behave yirsel.

In the first half Celtic played some scintillating football against a team with a budget that dwarves ours and merited going in at the interval at least 2 possibly 3 goals ahead. The way the ball was zipped about from defence through the midfield and to the forwards was terrific to watch. Boyata and Ambrose driving the ball out of defence, committing their midfield and then slipping the ball to Lustig (#Tache – Ohh Arrgghh) or Euro debutant wean Tierney. The midfield demanding the ball and play lovely link up play. And then the forceful play of Forrest, Commons and Griffiths who ran the Istanbul team ragged at times.

In summary, some of the football played in the first half was magnificent to watch.

What else was pleasing to see was the character shown following the Alamo assault for 15-20 minutes after Fenerbahce equalised. We could have easily crumbled and felt sorry for ourselves but instead regrouped, dusted ourselves down and took it to them for the final 25 minutes of the match. That showed character.

Everyone can see the problems in our team lie with not (currently) having two dependable centre backs and being unable as a team to defend corner kicks / set pieces.

After not retaining Denayer and Van Dijk this was always going to be a problem area. The injury to Simunovic and constant changing of the back four between Van Dijk (God bless him), Ambrose, Mulgrew, Boyata, Blackett, O’Connell, Simunovic and Aitken (I’m sure the Bear’s been involved!) has made it nigh on impossible to play a settled back four. I’m pretty sure Boyata and Simunovic will be Deila’s preference but they need games to build a partnership. With the Croat lad just in then injured and Boyata getting his longest run of match but still vastly inexperienced this may take time. Be patient with both players. They are ours and need us to give them as much support as possible.

My preference would be Lustig at centre back but the challenge with that is two-fold. One, he’s extremely injury prone and two, he’s a damn good full back.

The second and far bigger issue is our inability to defend as a team corner kicks and set plays. It’s both embarrassing and shambolic how many goals we’ve lost this season with our inability to do the basics. I don’t believe for one second the players aren’t absolutely pummelled at set pieces during training and made quite clear their roles but are the roles correct?

Reason I ask is after I got home from the game last night Dietmar Hamann of Liverpool and Germany national team fame made a really interesting observation. He opined that Celtic players marking ‘zones’ wasn’t the issue it was the Celtic players picking up opponents who aren’t doing their jobs. He highlighted this by showing several Fenerbahce players getting free runs to our 6 yard area and across Efe for their equaliser. Hamann made it quite clear from his playing days at the top level with Liverpool and Germany that the job for non-zonal defenders is to block the runs of their opponents. They don’t pull shirts or give away an easy penalty. Instead they jostle and put their bodies in position to deny their opponent that run at goal as the ball is played into the penalty box. A simple block will make it nigh on impossible for attackers to get in an area to meet the ball at the speed it’s played it.

Hamann couldn’t have been clearer on his assertions.

If he’s correct, then it falls down to the coaches not rigorously repeating this in practice or players not following instructions. I would find it near impossible if players are hammered in this method during training that they wouldn’t do this as a matter of course during a match as it would be bread and butter to them. If on the other hand they are being taught this and not following instructions then why are they defending corners……?

There is of course another option that may simplify matters. Why do we need every player back in our penalty area? If we leave two players higher up the pitch then logic dictates our opponents will leave at least three and possibly four defenders back. Take the corner kick taker out of the equation and the one (at least) opponent who sits outside the penalty area and this leaves only four or five opponents attacking a corner….would this not be far easier to defend against?

Getting back to the crux of my riposte, to say there’s no positives is just a bit daft and probably built on immediate disappointment.

Celtic are playing some terrific football at times against good European opponents and could / should have won our first two games. The team is doing a lot of things right and it would be foolish not to recognise this. Fix the obvious negatives and keep progressing with the clear positives and we’ll do ok this season.

Onwards and upwards….