We all know by now that Celtic lost the Glasgow Derby yesterday and that John Kennedy was largely at fault.
Yes, it was another decent performance in terms of chance-creation, but again we ended up failing to win the game. In four Glasgow derbies this season, we’ve now lost three and drawn one. Unacceptable.
This one hurt more than most of course. Celtic took on the Ibrox side in Govan for what was a massive Scottish Cup fourth-round clash. A chance to keep hold of the one trophy we still had in our grasp. Not that you would know it given the weak and stale display from Kennedy’s side yesterday.
Looking into that 2-0 defeat in more detail, Celtic were again the architects of their own downfall. The reason? Because once again we were left being taught lessons that had already been dished out in the past.
After the last Glasgow Derby in March, we were guilty of two things. Number one being a failure to deal with cross-balls, or perhaps more specifically set-pieces. The second? A lack of a ruthless edge to our forward play in the final third. Celtic didn’t have a problem creating chances against Rangers last month, but putting them away was another matter.
Both of those aspects of our game came back to haunt us again yesterday.
Celtic saw their old Glasgow Derby ghosts pop up again
For the opening goal, a shot is blocked by Kris Ajer. It then goes up into the air in our penalty area. It wasn’t a set-piece or a cross-ball, but it was in the air for a period and our defence was again slow to react. Steve Davis took it well in fairness to him, but he was given so much space and time to pull off the overhead kick.
The second goal? Comical. Diego Laxalt is beaten far too easily on our left flank by Joe Aribo. Once again, a cross into our penalty box has us absolutely all over the place. Kris Ajer and Stephen Welsh sees it completely bypass them before Jonjoe Kenny stabs it into his own net. Cross-balls again being our major weak point at the back.
And then you had the missed opportunities. We don’t need to rhyme them off, you know what they were. But we had four glorious chances in the second half alone – enough to win the game outright had we been more clinical.
Compare that to our rivals who had two major chances in the game and took both of them. It’s an incredible contrast in efficiency. What Rangers do well we just can’t seem to do the basics in.
They can deal with cross-balls with ease and take their chances when they come their way. John Kennedy effectively told us heading into the game that we’d been working on dealing with set-plays [Scottish Sun]. That should’ve meant we were more organised defensively from cross-balls or indeed from any wide threat.
We weren’t. And when you combine that with the return of us failing to take golden opportunities, there’s only one team to blame for yesterday.
That game at Ibrox was in our grasp if we were simply able to manage the basics. The sad thing? It doesn’t even surprise you that we failed to do so.
In other news, here’s one thing Dominic McKay can do to get fans on board today.
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