Celtic 0-0 Livingston certainly wasn’t in the script heading into the weekend, but there’s been one solid message coming from the dressing-room ever since.
The Hoops bossed Livi but still lacked that creative spark to cut them open. Plenty of crosses were fired into the penalty area, but outside of the late penalty miss, Max Stryjek had very little to do in the away team’s goal.
As you would expect then, Celtic have come in for plenty of criticism. Missing the chance to go top of the table and seeing us now trail by 4 points will do that. It’s part and parcel of football in Scotland.
But, even if there are any internal inquests after the stalemate, the squad are certainly still backing the principles put in place by Ange Postecoglou.
Firstly we had Callum McGregor coming out post-match to say the following via Celtic TV: “It’s important that we don’t dwell on it too much. We’ve been on a good run. Played some great football and got some great results. So we’ll learn from it and look at where we can be better. We’ll try and create more chances but I think we did enough to win the game.”
Then it was Jota’s turn hours later as he said the following in his post-match comments via the Scottish Sun: “I’d rather be in this team than the other team that has ten or 15 percent of possession. So, yes, we just have to stick to our principles and do our game, keep possession, find the spaces, score goals and be aggressive. That’s our way of playing.
“Today was not our day, we couldn’t score. But we have plenty more games to come.”
Celtic squad standing behind Ange Postecoglou principles
And finally, Cameron Carter-Vickers echoed similar remarks after the game. He was another quick to build up what Celtic are trying to do under the new manager.
As quoted by the Daily Record, the USA international said: “The way we play is the way we believe will bring us the most success and the players are all right behind that. That’s what we want to do, that’s what we try to do and that’s what we’ll keep doing.”
We can all debate what went wrong on Saturday. Undoubtedly a lack of creativity through the central areas was a big issue. The same goes for a failure to choose our best players with the likes of Kyogo starting the game on the bench.
But there’s clearly no disillusionment within the squad. Within the space of 48 hours we’ve had 3 of our most influential players come out and launch an immediate and unforced defence of the style being deployed under Ange.
If anything, at least we don’t have to concern ourselves with a lack of team unity. Could we really have said the same last season?
Hopefully, that unity leads to a swift response when Celtic travel to Hungary for Thursday’s Europa League encounter with Ferencvaros.
In other news, Celtic supporters left satisfied as club hit back at rivals with away fan snub
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