Soccer Football - Pre Season Friendly - Celtic v Wolverhampton Wanderers - Aviva Stadium, Dublin, Republic of Ireland - July 29, 2023 Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers before the match REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
Brendan Rodgers took a fairly detached view of Celtic’s 4-2 win over Ross County to open the defence of the SPFL title.
It was a strange match best highlighted by the first half corner count of 7-1 to the visitors with Celtic going in 3-0 in front.
Ross County ‘won’ the second half despite Celtic looking more like their old self, highlighted by Matt O’Riley’s goal from a brilliant pass by Kyogo Furuhashi.
There were two surprises when Rodgers announced his team with Carl Starfelt and Reo Hatate on the bench, later it emerged that the Swedish defender is looking for a transfer.
That opened the door for Maik Nawrocki to make his debut but it was the performance of Cameron Carter-Vickers, playing his first match in three months that brought some solidity to a new look defence.
We didn’t start the game well. I thought we were very slow to get up to speed and they started with a good intensity and gave us some pressure in that first 10-12 minutes.
Once we then got to grips with that and started to move the ball, we played some really good football.
I think it’s a difficult challenge when you play against a team that’s man-marking, and I thought Ross County deserve a lot of credit today because they stuck at it and they made it very difficult for us, but eventually we worked the goals really well. So we’re pleased overall with the three points.
It’s the first game of the season and gradually we’ll get better and better, but we saw some bits of really good play and we scored four goals and maybe could have had a few more with a bit of luck.
It remains to be seen of Starfelt is still a Celtic player by the time they face Aberdeen next Sunday but Rodgers will know that a big improvement will be required to take full points from Barry Robson’s side who started their season with a 0-0 draw today at Livingston.
Lol groundhog day,the banter years are back,though you could say they were never away.
Three months of insufferable biased media hyperbole disintegrates in 90 minutes
3 points and 3 goals better off after the first round of fixtures
They will never learn
So Sillyman is away to PSV onloan so much for sevco getting first dibs on him liars,as are the press for going along with it.
So that will be Bayern out another million quid then putting him out onloan,with PSV also now on first dibs options with the buy option remember that was sevco safety net lol.
No doubt it will be another 10% sell on clause for PSV as well remember that deal for sevco as well.
Now that leaves Bayern getting only 80% of any transfer fee for Sillyman should he be sold,for a player that belongs to them.
At this rate Bayern will end with nothing from Sillyman and end up owing all the klubs he has been loaned out to money.
If only all of that was true,but the sevco press will continue to push this pish forever.
After that result tonight watch in the coming days about more players being targeted and linked with sevco to soothe the pain of tonight’s defeat,a complying press should see to that.
You could say the sevco manager is Bealing tonight much like the klan klubs fans.
The nickel&dime players and their nickel&dime manager getting mega stick from the klan tonight,possible protests outside the stadium being lined up should they not make the championship league group stages,and if any more points are dropped before we play them at the BIGOT dome.
That’s the rumours some of their blogs tonight with Dark Mingwall and the onion bears leading the cries.
Lol the thing is you will still have BENNYS in the press such as Chris Itchy sack Jack and other like Kris Boyd who will still be backing sevco after that defeat,they get out and put out a positive spin on this.
Oh and the klan fans on their blogs tonight are now calling out the players as DUFF and want Mr Bealing to get his P45.
Maik looked good apart from loosing a few aerial physical battles in his hour of his competitive debut. Like all new comers to our league, the speed and physicality will take time to adjust to. However his coolness with the ball at his feet and in tight situations, as well as his striding forward and ball playing skills from the back look a far better upgrade on Carl. He may have lost a few aerial challenges today on his competitive debut but he never panicked and never gave a clear opportunity to an opponent due to an error like Carl never seemed to eradicate from his game. Carl served us well and I wish him every success, I can also understand his wish to leave as I would follow Jacynta too lol!
What is now blatantly obvious is that we need a better keeper. Hart has been great, however he had an error in him like Carl. What is very worrying is that those errors are increasing. 3 in pre-season and 2 in todays game proves this.
If the reports are true that it is an £9.5 million pound deal for Carl then use that money to buy Livakovic and bank a profit of over £1million in return. If he becomes top class then we sell him for a profit, if at 28 he is great and stays for years like Gordon or Boruc then we still win.
We should also go and get Mbuyamba, it was reported it would take £6million earlier in the summer however Sampdoria seem to be close with £1.8million. Go get him!
Another we should buy is Tasos Douvikas from Utrecht, top scorer in Holland last season and not Asian, as when the Asian cup comes around in January we could loose 5 of our most influential forward players to that competition in Kyogo, Oh, Maeda, Reo and Yang not including Kwon, Tilio, Iwata and Yuki. Reports are it will take £6million plus but when you take the Asian players from our forward line and especially centre forward in Kyogo, Oh and Maeda then that leaves us with Johnny Kenny who is on loan in Ireland. Doesn’t look great!
With this, I think we also need another European or non Asian winger as with the above mentioned Asian cup would leave us with only Abada, Forrest and Said left if all are taken up by their parent countries.
Again Ange was great at some things, but blinkered by his strict 4-3-3 formation that was shown up in Europe but also by signing too many players from the Asian market, while making us dependant on them (they are mostly great players how I am delighted to have here) but does leave us totally exposed when the Asian cup comes around!
Lol so now the sevco pundits are screaming for the Sumo wrestler to return,oh dear.
I’d guess the average ‘stay’ of a player in the modern game is two years, particularly as he approaches thirty, looking for a ‘pay day’ and so on.
The reverse of this coin can be seen over the city where a cash-strapped club must pay big contracts to aged crocks and unwanted driftwood for a minimum of two years.
Hart, Ralston and Taylor are simply not up to Champions League football, I have said this last season and nothing has changed my mind On their showing yesterday we badly need defenders of a higher level to compete against teams from the top 5 leagues. Now I am not saying we should get rid of them as they are decent squad players but I would consider making Joe a goalkeeping coach and use the other two for domestic cup matches . Unless we improve these positions it will be same as usual in Europe
Despite us winning and Bealeball lol getting beat, Keevins decides to write negative crap about us for the forth week running. You would think a wise old owl like him would have written 2 paragraphs incase the unthinkable happened and the team he is a cheerleader for got beat. Age does not bring any wisdom
Yep I just read that , he’s done a whole article on the possibility ( his hope ) of us maybe dropping points at Pittodrie in a weeks time and at the same time mentioning in a couple of lines at the end of the article that Rangers lost yesterday
Astonishing stuff
Surely the article should’ve been largely about a team who did actually lose on the first game of the season ?