Steve Clarke yesterday proved once again that he could be the next Celtic manager.
Clarke’s men may have been on the end of a 1-0 home defeat by the Hoops, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
If we’re all being truthful with ourselves, we were fortunate to come away with the points. Celtic peppered the Kilmarnock penalty area after Kirk Broadfoot’s red card. Before that, however, it didn’t look as though we were going to come close to scoring.
Again, much of that was down to how Clarke set his side up. He knew he could get at Celtic down the flanks whilst he was happy for his men to sit deep and remain organised.
Kilmarnock were happy to allow the likes of Callum McGregor and Scott Brown plenty of time on the ball. Yet, when it went forward to the likes of Ryan Christie, Scott Sinclair, or Odsonne Edouard, there was always a blue-and-white jersey attached to them.
Celtic struggled to get their flair players even facing goalwards yesterday. Clarke knew his side were perfectly safe to allow the Hoops midfielders possession, so long as their flair players always had their backs to goal.
When they won possession, they would then look to hit quickly down the flanks. The Killie manager knew that Celtic’s full-backs would be bombing forward. Using the pace of Jordan Jones and Chris Burke, his plan was clear.
Not the first time Clarke has been difficult to deal with
This isn’t the first time he’s been able to snuff out Celtic for large spells. In the last two meetings at Rugby Park before yesterday, Clarke has come out on top in both of them.
The fact he continues to give Celtic continuous troubles on a shoestring budget is exceptional. And it’s not just the Hoops either. Yesterday was just Brendan Rodgers’ fourth win over Clarke in 10 meetings, despite consistently having a massively improved budget and wealth of talent to the Scotsman.
Clarke has also only lost one out of four meetings with Steven Gerrard’s Rangers. He’s beaten both of the Glasgow teams twice at Rugby Park, despite the fact they’ve spent multi-millions worth on players.
He managed to turn a Kilmarnock side sitting bottom of the league and winless in eight games, into a team that’s now fourth and gunning for Aberdeen in third.
He’s getting the best out of a group of players and punching them above their weight. Surely, that’s exactly what we need to start doing in Europe.
If Clarke sticks around after Brendan Rodgers decides his time at Parkhead is over, he’s surely worth a shout.
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