Celtic captain Scott Brown has criticised artificial surfaces once again, but refused to use it as the main reason for our Livingston capitulation.
The Hoops struggled for the second consecutive time on plastic in yesterday’s 2-0 loss at Livingston. The result followed a sloppy 1-0 win at Hamilton several weeks ago. In both matches, Celtic have been seriously unimpressive.
Combination play between our attacking quartet has been non-existent, and it’s clear Celtic struggle to get into a rhythm on synthetic pitches. The defeat to Livingston was a shock, but our performance on the plastic pitch wasn’t.
Brown has long been against the use of plastic pitches in Scotland’s top flight. And speaking in the Scottish Sun, he once again has come out and criticised them.
“For us we can’t play our normal game and move the ball quickly. It slows it down a little bit, but it’s then up to us to play better.
“We can go direct, we chopped and changed and put two up front as well. It wasn’t our day but we need to go back and assess what’s happened.
“It wasn’t to be and it wasn’t the best team performance overall. We want to win every game. It’s not just these games, it’s every single game at home and away. For us coming here and dropping three points is disappointing.”
Celtic have concerns on plastic, but performances must improve
Plastic pitches don’t look like being removed from Scottish football anytime soon. However, it’s clear that we therefore must adapt to try and combat the challenge of playing on them.
Celtic didn’t just lose the game yesterday because of our lack of attacking fluency. Defensively, we struggled to deal with direct balls to Lyndon Dykes all afternoon. The pitch was hardly a factor in losing the physical battles.
It was interesting to note that Lennon hooked Brown at the Tony Macaroni Arena yesterday. The former Scotland captain just didn’t have any influence on proceedings whatsoever. He particularly struggles on these kinds of pitches, and it must be something Lenny will look at in the future.
If these pitches give opposition sides an advantage against us, why would they change them? Livingston, Kilmarnock, and Hamilton aren’t out to help the likes of Celtic. They all seem quite happy with the turf they play on.
It’s down to us to be a lot more aggressive than we were yesterday. The game was still there to be won at 0-0, but we started feeling sorry for ourselves and were woefully exposed at the back.
Hamilton were unlucky not to get anything a few weeks ago either. Celtic need to start waking up on the artificial grass. Any more performances like that could be devastating in what’s becoming a tight race early on.
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