2)\u00a0<\/strong>Celtic full-back Emilio Izaguirre created six goalscoring opportunities. Milan themselves made eight.<\/strong><\/p>\n 3)<\/strong>\u00a0Charlie Mulgrew’s 93 per cent pass accuracy was higher than any Milan player in the starting XI.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0<\/strong>Milan’s Riccardo Montolivo won seven tackles – more than the entire Celtic midfield (5)<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0<\/strong>Celtic winger Derk Boerrigter put seven crosses into the box, but not a single one found a teammate.<\/p>\n Celtics campaign didn’t finish last night. It finished when Scott Brown kicked out at Neymar. Thats the truth of the matter.<\/p>\n It left the side woefully short in midfield, regardless of however much you rate-or don’t rate -the man. Theres no doubt Celtic are a better side with him than without him, and his own lack of discipline cost Celtic dear. That, though, is no excuse for starting last nights game with just two in midfield. The above fact about Montolivo winning more tackles than the Celtic midfield is not surprising. Celtic didn’t have a midfield.<\/p>\n Its surprising that Charlie Mulgrew had the most successful pass completion rate, but not surprising that Derk Boerigter failed to find a colleague with a cross. There was usually no-one to find.<\/p>\n Poor Izzy. He tried his wee heart out, and along with Mikael Lustig and the other two defenders they cannot really be blamed for last night on effort, though you would have thought they would have tried a bit harder on the goals.<\/p>\n Fraser Forster still won’t come out for crosses, which means he’s been told to stay on his line, which is just plain stupid. He’s six foot seven with about another four foot in reach. no-one should be able to out jump him.<\/p>\n One of the things to remember at this level is that the other team will study the way you play, and adapt accordingly. Thats what Milan did last night. They knew that Forster doesn’t come off his line, they knew that Samaras and Commons would run down blind alleys, and they knew that we didn’t have a striker worth worrying about.<\/p>\n Our style of sidieways passing instead of trying a shot from distance meant they could simply wait until a poor pass meant they could nick the ball away. Which they did.<\/p>\n There was a glimmer of hope early on when a nervous Milan keeper fumbled a couple of crosses, which should have signalled an all out siege on him with high balls, low balls and anything else we could muster, but instead it was side to side and back again….<\/p>\n It would be pointless to aim \u00a0the finger of blame at anyone ( bar Brown ) in particular. Lennon could have altered the style, or even played with three or four in the middle. Two wingers-especially one just back from injury and the other on an indecency charge ( no, theres no point in doing the joke about Forrest being exposed )-was not going to work against a side that is adept at counter attacking. Actually, its three wingers if you count Samaras, and a guy in a free role in Commons.<\/p>\n Joe Ledley didn’t start, and Anthony Stokes was left out as well. Two battlers who would at least have put up a fight.<\/p>\n Whats more irritating about the whole thing is neither Milan, Ajax or Barcelona were actually that good. none of them will set the heather on fire in this years tournament. Its just that they were better than us.<\/p>\n Anyway, Neil Lennon made his excuses;<\/p>\n \u201cLook, realistically getting into the Champions League was fantastic for us.”<\/p>\n Really ? Getting past an Irish side, a Swedish side and an unknown from just outside China was fantastic ? Especially when you see that Elfsborg and Karagandy are themselves having a nightmare in the Europa League.<\/p>\n ” When the draw was made we knew how difficult it was going to be. We competed, we competed again tonight but that quality at the top end of the pitch has caught up with us this season.”<\/p>\n Well, he bought these players-including \u00a35m on two strikers that he didn’t think were good enough to start-and another \u00a0one he just gave a new contract to \u00a0he didn’t seem to think was up to it either.<\/p>\n ” Some of the players have covered themselves in glory and been fantastic through the campaign but it\u2019s been mainly the defensive end of the pitch we\u2019re talking about here. ”<\/p>\n The defenders are fine. The way they are organised needs looking at though, especially from set pieces.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have enjoyed the European experience but hopefully this campaign is one the players will learn from. We will do everything we can to come back this year and compete in it again. That\u2019s the target now.\u201d<\/p>\n Any chance we could try to be prepared for it this time ?<\/p>\n ” We do have some money and we want to spend it, preferably in the January window. But it\u2019s not as if we didn\u2019t try to spend it in the summer. ”<\/p>\n Its just that those chairmen we made offers to for their players kept laughing at us.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had three or four targets in mind but they fell through for various reasons ”<\/p>\n Er, yes. Those chairmen kept laughing at you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, what next ? The aura of doom and gloom around the club today needs to be lifted quickly, which won’t be easy. Lennon needs to decide which players he’s keeping, ( The defence, Ledley and Commons ) and move the rest on. They have had their day.<\/p>\n Actually, its going to be difficult to keep those players unless the club matches their ambition. But thats something to keep us fretting over Christmas.<\/p>\n Scott MacDonald was the man in the picture yesterday, he was the man who scored in the win over Milan at Celtic Park last time round, before a gang of vigilantes stormed on to the pitch and beat keeper Dida to within an inch of his life.<\/p>\n Or something like that.<\/p>\n One thing from last night-what on earth were some of the support doing applauding at the end ?<\/p>\n The more we put up with the shite on the field, the shite from the board and the shite about being a wonderful support, the more we will be treated to shite like last night.<\/p>\n It was a very , very long day and night yesterday. And Celtic made it even longer.<\/p>\n Heres another picture, can anyone guess where this is heading ? ?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Celtics dismal European campaign came to an all too predictable end last night with a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Milan. Coupled with Ajax…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/bollocks.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-13j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4050,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions\/4050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n