Against Alloa on January 22 Ange Postecoglou’s side certainly knew that they had been in a battle, they returned to Glasgow battered and bruised by a combination of inept refereeing and ‘over enthusiastic’ opponents.
Yosuke Guchi hasn’t played since, Callum McGregor is sporting a mask to protect his face while Giorgos Giakoumakis claimed that Celtic’s opponents had crossed a line.
In his first criticism of Scottish referees Postecoglou called out Don Robertson for failing to apply the rules and protect employees.
Smarting from the criticism Barry Ferguson admitted that he had sent his side out to get in Celtic’s faces and bite around their ankles. McGregor and Guchi can vounch for that.
Ten days after the match at the Indodrill Ferguson settled back at home to watch the Glasgow derby on telly.
He was shocked by how passive Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side were as he told Daily Record readers this morning:
I’m still so deflated with what I watched in that first half that it’s hard to feel anything other than completely numb.
Look, spare me the big post-mortem and leave me out of the tactical analysis of where Giovanni Van Bronckhorst got it wrong against a rampant Celtic side. I’m sure my old team-mate will have worked it all out for himself already. It’s not rocket science.
Give good players too much time and space and they’ll do you all kinds of damage and the simple truth is Celtic absolutely mauled his side in the wide areas.
But that’s not even half the story because this wasn’t about selections or managerial decisions made before the game kicked-off.
We can argue about systems, game-plans and identities until we’re all blue in the face but the simple fact is if your players are not willing to compete and they let talented opponents time and space to play then none of the rest of it matters.
If your full-backs don’t realise that they have to close down Jota on one side on Liel Abada on the other then you’re going to get what’s coming to you. That’s got nothing to do with the manager’s tactics and everything to do with a willingness to go out there and compete.
This performance was all about the lack of desire and fight his players showed as soon as the first whistle was blown.
Against Celtic in the Scottish Cup no-one was accusing Ferguson’s Alloa players of lacking desire or fight- the reverse was the case as Postecoglou counted the wounded.
Typical,Get the Blood and thunder hammer throwers back and assault anything who moves ….Ferguson couldn’t spell the word manager and when you read his solution to deal with an opponent then it’s not surprising he is only good enough for Kelty and Alloa.
Ferguson epitomises everything that is wrong with Scottish football with the certainty that as long as such a culture exists, Scotland will continue to be a laughing stock in world football.
No wonder the English describe the SPL as a pub league.
So long as attitudes like Ferguson’s prevail, they are not far wrong.