Celtic produced their worst performance of the season as they were knocked out of the Betfred Cup at home to Ross County this afternoon.
An incredibly dire and insipid display from the Hoops saw us lose our chance of making it 13 consecutive trophies on the bounce (assuming we beat Hearts in the Scottish Cup next month).
Ross Stewart grabbed the opener from the penalty spot after Kristoffer Ajer and Christopher Jullien failed to deal with another cross-ball. Alex Iacovitti then wrapped it up with a ridiculously simple header from a corner late on.
Here, we take a look at three things we learned in what was a new low for the club this season:
Celtic no better without wingers
Neil Lennon tried something different today with his formation as he removed width from the team. With Jeremie Frimpong and Mohamed Elyounoussi suspended and benched respectively, there was an onus on Tom Rogic and Ryan Christie to create from a central area. Neither did.
Both men were quickly closed down, and with County playing with two banks of five and four respectively, both men were quickly closed down when in possession.
Christie came closest to creating on a couple of occasions with some dangerous-looking passes, but there just wasn’t enough room to cut through the Country rearguard. What was really needed was an ability to stretch them out.
Our most dangerous moments in the game came when Hatem Elhamed delivered some deliveries on the right, but with Diego Laxalt struggling for a partner further down the left, he didn’t have much of an impact in the game.
If the day was a chance for the central flair players to make their mark – they never did.
The Edouard-Ajeti partnership is showing no signs of clicking
Lennon has often decided to go with a lone striker this season after initially trying out two up top in the early stages of the season. However, today he decided to go with Odsonne Edouard and Albian Ajeti. It didn’t work.
It’s difficult to blame the manager for this. It’s what many of us may have chosen in the final third of the pitch. Both players should have more than enough in their locker to shoot down Ross County, but it felt for large spells as though we were playing with two lone-strikers – as bizarre as that sounds.
Edouard was doing his best to try and connect the play and use Ajeti when necessary, but there was no chemistry there. It looked as though the Swiss forward was unsure of what to actually do at times, and there were no real great opportunities that came from combination play between both men.
This is a partnership that should be absolutely thriving by now. When Ajeti signed in the summer, if you had told Celtic fans that in November he still wouldn’t be used to playing alongside Edouard, we would’ve absolutely laughed at the suggestion. But it’s turning into reality, and this was just yet another experiment from the manager that didn’t work today.
Celtic continue to plummet to depths we didn’t realise they were capable of
Well, there goes the prospect of a quintuple treble. In all seriousness, many fans would’ve felt that possibility had already pretty much disappeared well before today. But this afternoon made it officially so.
Even though Celtic had previously gone just two wins in nine heading into this one, Lennon could always point to the fixture list and say that we had plenty of tough matches. Rangers (H), Aberdeen (A), Hibs (A), Lille (A), and Sparta Prague (H) and (A). These are all tough games in fairness, even if the performances and results still haven’t been good enough.
This afternoon’s display, however, was a new low. This was the first game in our run of 10 that you could look at and say “that’s a routine one”. The kind of game where you expect us to just turn up, win 3-0, and get on with things. County, after all, sit ninth and are hardly having a good time of it themselves in the league.
But this was a new low from Lennon and his Celtic side. This was the kind of fixture you just couldn’t see us losing, regardless of what kind of form we came into it in. Today we managed to pull off our latest and biggest embarrassment. Time to go Neil, this is now scandalous.
In other news, Lennon explained pre-match why he left out one of our key men.
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