Nowhere near good enough- Stephen McManus doesn’t sugar coat defeat at Berwick

Stephen McManus wasn’t in the mood for sugar coating Celtic’s 1-0 Lowland League defeat at Berwick Rangers last night. 

The B team started the season with a 3-1 home win over Cowdenbeath on Saturday but came unstick last night against a side that lost 6-0 away to Hearts B on Saturday. 

Winning isn’t the be all and end all at this level but playing for Celtic at a professional level carries responsibility for those aiming to reach first team level. 

Berwick finished last season in 8th place in the 18 team Lowland League last season following relegation from the SPFL with their part-time set up coming to terms with demotion and attempting t build up to compete with clubs ambitious to join the senior ranks. 

There was no anger or fury in McManus’ reaction but his delivery made it very clear that higher standards are required if players are to achieve their ambitions at Celtic.

If you don’t start the game well, at any level you will get punished and that was the case. We got caught on the hop, we you lost a goal early doors and we never really dominated the game by creating the chances that we usually do. 

We had loads of the ball but I never felt that we really hurt them as much as we should have. 

There are loads of games this year, the boys are going to play loads and loads of minutes which is important. All of the boys feel that at the moment they are on the cusp of first team football but they have a long way to go. 

The good thing is that the games come thick and fast, they’ll prepare well, we’ll recover well and we’ll look forward to the game at the weekend. 

On Saturday Celtic are away to Spartans who finished last season in fifth place, last night Spartans beat Hearts B 1-0. 

CELTIC: Oluwayemi; Dede (Quinn 89) , Lawal, Otoo, Anderson; Letsoa, Carse (Thomson 67); Vata, Summers, Davidson; Kenny (Murphy 63) 

SUBS: Luyeye, Morrison, Corr, Kelly