Ange Postecoglou certainly didn’t sound too keen on Hibs’ approach against Celtic yesterday as he queried whether they even created an opportunity against the Hoops.
Celtic came up short at Easter Road in a disappointing 0-0 stalemate. It was our first dropped points in the league since December. Thankfully, Rangers made a mess of the opportunity to narrow the gap thanks to their own 2-2 draw with Motherwell.
But from a Celtic perspective, yesterday remains a big frustration. The Hoops bossed possession but failed to create enough genuine clear-cut chances to win the game.
And as Ange continues to try and praise the performance in the media, he certainly didn’t sound too pleased with how Hibs tried to tackle his side.
As quoted by the National, the manager said: “In terms of the performance I thought the players, at a difficult venue on a difficult pitch with the opposition sitting deep for the most part, were good.
“It’s hard when the opposition sit so deep. There are so many bodies in the box to try and find ways through. There were a couple of times when the ball just didn’t bounce our way in critical areas. But I thought the players’ efforts were excellent.
“Football is a challenging game when the opposition set up like that. It is not the easiest way to get a goal and that was all that was missing. Did they create a chance? Really? You are coming away from home against a team that sits deep. You’ve got to understand football is not played in perfect isolated conditions. You’re talking about an opposition whose main role is to try and stop you, a pitch that is not conducive to moving the ball quickly.”
Celtic didn’t do enough to open Hibs up
You can understand Ange’s frustration here, but the truth is we simply need to be better than what we were yesterday.
I’m really not a fan of blaming how the opposition set up. It suggests to me that you’re acknowledging that there’s a simple way to stop your team. That just by sitting deep you can tame this Celtic side and have a decent chance of snatching a point.
If we’re the team that we believe we are, we should be finding the solutions to any approach another Premiership side takes against us. We shouldn’t be relying on them opening up and leaving space for us.
Where was the quality yesterday when it came to stretching the opposition? Sure, we may have had decent width and got the ball out to the wide-men regularly. But where was the quality with our crossing into the penalty area? We had nothing to show for our possession and that’s the main concern.
It was far too similar to our 0-0 draw at St Mirren back in December. Or the 0-0 draw with Livingston in October. There were even striking similarities to the 1-0 loss at the Tony Macaroni Arena in September.
In other words, we have plenty of improvements to make. We can’t just resign ourselves to a point just because teams are sitting deep against us. Champions always find a way, and that’s still something we need to learn.
In other news, Today showed just how big a player Giorgos Giakoumakis really is for Celtic
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