Academy boss Tommy McIntyre was disappointed but philosophical after tonight’s Glasgow Cup Final defeat to Rangers.
A late goal from Curtis Jones couldn’t prevent the Ibrox kids from lifting the trophy at Clyde’s Broadwood Stadium.The young Celts never really did themselves justice with only Belfast bhoy Paul George catching the eye.
After the match McIntyre said: “We started the game well, for 25 minutes we dominated but we needed to get the first goal. Unfortunately we lost a sloppy goal which was annoying because we had worked a lot on defending set plays.
“Sometimes that can be the difference in a match. That goal really effected us, some heads dropped and we started chasing the match. Then we lost another bad goal after that with a bit of hesitancy in the box.
“What really matters is what happens at both ends, the bit in the middle is important but you need to be able to defend your penalty box and to attack in the other box. I don’t think that we did enough of that tonight.”
Celtic started with nine of the side that had beaten Hearts 2-0 at u-19 level on Friday with Marcus Fraser and John Herron coming in to replace Stephen O’Donnell at right-back and Islam Feruz in midfield.
George was causing Rangers problems on the left flank but there wasn’t much activity in the penalty box to trouble the Rangers defence who were well marshalled by the commanding Kamil Wiktorski.
With 27 minutes gone Rangers opened the scoring when an inswinging free kick from the left by Adam Hunter was left by everyone and allowed to creep into the net at Robbie Thomson’s far post.
Nine minutes later Celtic were left with a mountain to climb when Kyle McAusland caused panic in the Celtic defence before netting from 12 yards out.Celtic failed to function properly as a team with the midfield unable to link effectively with the strikers and the back four looking uncomfortable under pressure.
There was no real pressure put on the Rangers goal until the double substitution of Mo Yaqub and Ryan Hutchison for Marcus Fraser and Callum McGregor.
Yaqub went to left-back with Filip Twardzik pushed into midfield where he had a greater influence on the game as Celtic adopted a more direct approach.
Filip Twardzik should have found the net from a cut-back by George in the 79th minute but sent his shot over the bar with brother Patrik striking the bar with an opportunist 25 yarder five minutes later.
Jones gave Celtic hope of forcing the game into extra time when he scored from close range after Rangers ‘keeper Blair Currie parried a shot from Liam Madden but there was to be no further scoring.
McIntyre added: “We’ll learn from this, we’ll pick a lot from the match. The coaching staff and players will learn from this.
“The players will be hurt and disappointed. We’ll dissect the match, look to see how we can improve and try to make sure that they do learn the lessons.
“They are young kids and you sometimes forget how young they are, the criticism has to be constructive. With every success you have to experience certain failures and they can learn from this.”
CELTIC: Robbie Thomson; Marcus Fraser (Mo Yaqub 74), John Young, Curtis Jones, F Twardzik; John Herron, Liam Madden, Callum McGregor ( Ryan Hutchison 74); P Twardzik, Liam Gormley, Paul George SUBS James Wightman, Michael Fulton, Michael Devlin, Joe Chalmers, Jordan Moffat
