Neil Lennon’s recent inclusion of Scott Bain in starting XIs looked like a decent enough idea when it first began, but it’s now going on longer than necessary,
New summer-signing Vasilis Barkas was dropped after Celtic’s 3-1 Europa League defeat at home to AC Milan last month. This came after a rocky start to his Parkhead career in which he simply wasn’t saving enough straight-forward looking shots.
But Bain hasn’t exactly batted it out of the park himself after featuring in all of the club’s last five matches. The Scotland international has shipped 10 goals in those five games, albeit a ropey defence in front of him hasn’t helped matters.
Yet even so, Bain has produced far too many dodgy mistakes that have been punished in recent weeks. He was extremely unconvincing for Aberdeen’s second goal at Pittodrie a couple of weeks ago, whilst he should’ve kept out Lille’s first in our Europa League clash in France days later.
He didn’t look like saving anything against Sparta Prague as he conceded another four last Thursday, whilst question marks could easily be raised about how easily Declan Gallagher found it to glance a header past him for Motherwell yesterday.
To sum up, this Bain experiment isn’t reaping any rewards. It was a big call from Lennon to drop Barkas, and perhaps you could argue that it was the right one to allow the Greek time to get himself in order after an unconvincing start.
But we also have to remember that Barkas cost Celtic a reported £4.5million from AEK Athens in the summer (Scottish Sun). The club has invested heavily in him, and it makes more sense to back him as opposed to Bain considering there’s been absolutely no improvement since the number two came into the fold.
Bain has his place in this Celtic squad, and for now is decent enough as a back-up shot-stopper. He even admitted himself that he had no expectations of regular first-team football this season given he was way down the pecking order last year (Glasgow Times). Even Bain knows his role is as a squad player, and it’s one that he accepts.
It’s also clear that the supporters are starting to see enough of this most recent Lennon selection experiment. As many urged the manager to give Barkas his place back and entrust him to kick on, here’s a look at some of the verdicts on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Chxppily/status/1325576519872294915
https://twitter.com/Brugha_COS/status/1325577769435230210
In other news, Celtic’s Europa League rivals all suffered surprising setbacks over the weekend.
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