By Joe McHugh
The emotions of being a Celtic fan were highlighted brilliantly at Wembley yesterday as Tony Mowbray’s side gave the sort of performance that we’ve been waiting months/years to see.
Without kicking off a Mowbray-Strachan debate yesterday’s 5-0 hammering of Egyptian side Al Ahly was basically achieved by the same players that couldn’t score against Hibs or Hearts to hand cash-strapped Rangers the SPL title.
The despair of last season as we staggered from game to game without any confidence or pattern and regularly without goals was blown away as a team containing Lee Naylor and Massimo Donati demonstrated that they are certainly capable of better than they have shown over the last two seasons.
Only Marc-Antoine Fortune and Landry N’Guemo had been added to last season’s side while Shunsuke Nakamura, Paul Hartley and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink have moved on.
The actual players didn’t seem so important yesterday, the most impressive feature was the movement, energy and confidence of players who had been running on empty last season and appeared demoralised at times.
Aiden McGeady and Shaun Maloney were the key players in the revamp.
Notionally given wide roles both players had licence to move inside, looking for the ball and creating chances as well as causing problems for defenders whilst opening up spaces for full-backs to explore.
Strachan’s wide men were exactly that, wide players, fed the ball on the flank then expected to be creative with two markers in close pursuit.
That system did bring some success and had it’s merits but there was always the feeling that we weren’t getting the best out of Nakamura and McGeady while others also suffered in a team over reliant on two players.
With McGeady and Maloney happy to cut inside to link up with strikers Scott McDonald and Fortune there was openings for N’Guemo and Donati to exploit with full-backs Naylor and Andreas Hinkel both happy to exploit the space created.
Despite all the attacking options it was impossible to look beyond the contribution of Artur Boruc who although hardly in perfect shape demonstrated that natural instinct to pull off saves that ordinary ‘keepers don’t get near.
Holding back the optimism won’t be easy, at least until the next match, but there was enough on show at Wembley to suggest that we might have a team making progress again and there’s a good case for arguing that since the Champions League ties with AC Milan in 2007 the team hadn’t been developing.
A win over Spurs to claim the Wembley Cup would be great, and hopefully an invite back for next season’s event, but the only games that matter are those against Moscow Dynamo over the next ten days.
Ousting the Russians from the Champions League will be a major achievement and give the squad a much needed confidence boost for the season ahead.
The glasses are all half-full at the moment with hope and promise in the air, if these strange emotions continue then going to watch Celtic could suddenly become enjoyable again!
Same players couldn't score against Cardiff – we shall see.
I'm a bit cagey about getting too excited myself…
it sounds like they're doing well against Spurs though