Make no mistake, Celtic have had an absolutely fantastic campaign so far.
Top of the Premiership by 3 points with the League Cup already in the trophy room? Nobody expected such an incredible portion of progress to be made in such a short space of time by Ange Postecoglou.
However, that doesn’t mean we’re quite there yet. Or that we’re anywhere near a perfect side. Even Ange would scoff at that suggestion. There remains plenty of weaknesses that we’ve still to improve upon, with the main one being breaking down low blocks.
Hibernian set up to frustrate Celtic at Easter Road yesterday, defending deep when we looked to get our attacking threats on the ball. This seldom allowed Daizen Maeda to run in behind, and saw us overly-reliant on crosses into the penalty box. With a lack of physical presence in the final third, we succumbed to a 0-0 draw.
No surprise really. Not when we failed to do the same away to St Mirren in December when they decided to park the bus too. Or against Livingston at both Celtic Park and the Tony Macaroni Arena, where we managed to drop 5 points combined and failed to score against them over the course of 180 minutes.
Such a huge part of Ange’s style is getting the wingers and the full-backs in behind the opposition defence. Low blocks are specifically set up to ensure there’s limited room to do just that. And when your central attackers are off form such as Tom Rogic and Reo Hatate, you’re going to struggle to create genuine goalscoring opportunities.
Celtic need performance boost over the next 7 days
If we go out and perform how we did on Sunday against St Mirren and Livingston, chances are we won’t be picking up maximum points. Against the Buddies, we should be able to utilise the large spaces at Celtic Park to our advantage. Especially given they’re not as adept as Livingston when it comes to playing a 10-man defence.
On Sunday at the Tony Macaroni Arena, however, Celtic need to find the solutions they didn’t at Easter Road. The return of Giorgos Giakoumakis should give us a bigger threat going forward, especially if our reliance on cross-balls is as heavy as it was at Easter Road. Having the big Greek in the middle should allow us to ruffle some feathers in Livingston for a change.
Alternatively, Celtic start to move the ball a lot quicker than they have done in their recent games against low blocks. It can’t be 3 and 4 touches on the ball every time before a forward pass is made to a teammate. We too often allow teams to get back into their shape by doing just that.
If the likes of Rogic and Hatate manage to find their creative spark, then it provides us with a lot more creativity centrally. The same goes for if Matt O’Riley is given the opportunity to start in these matches – one of the key mistakes made yesterday was Matt being rooted to the bench.
If we come away with 6 points over the next 2 matches, it’ll be a big boost for the club. It’ll show that we can indeed find the answers within the squad when it comes to breaking down packed defences. That we aren’t just reliant on the opposition coming out and leaving spaces in behind.
These fixtures cannot be taken for granted. Combined, St Mirren and Livi have taken 7 points from us this season. Bagging all of those would’ve effectively won us the title by now. Here’s hoping we show much more intent over the next week than we have done in previous meetings against them this term.
In other news, Celtic’s moaning rivals are forgetting just how many points VAR would’ve cost them this season
Receive a digest of our best Celtic content each week direct to your mailbox
