Forster - at the first goal, went down like an old man with arthritic knees. For someone who is 6 foot 7 inches he needs to command his area a lot more. Defence - Missed Big Maj badly. Rogne was just back after a lay off and looked rusty. He couldn't handle the physicality of Jelavic which is a worry. Izzy tried his best. Wilson couldn't get forward. Mulgrew didn't have his best game but he needs the big Swede beside him. Midfield - Pretty even battle. Missed Brown when he went off. Ki was ****ing hopeless as his replacement. His free kicks are awful. Ledley tried to get forward whenever possible and took his goal well. Commons probably had his worst game in a Celtic shirt. Kayal did what he could. Forward - There are times when I wish I could take Samaras aside and give him a boot in the balls. Yesterday was one of those occasions. Far too often he tried to beat three or four men instead of releasing the ball. Very frustrating! Hooper was anonymous but lacked supply. Overall, we played poorly yesterday. This is going to sound strange but that's a good thing. We fell to their level rather than Rangers rising to our level of performance. We must get back to playing like we were a few weeks ago. Get back to a front two of Hooper and Stokes (after all, Stokesy is our top scorer!) and pray that Big Maj recovers quicker from injury than has been forecast.
I thought it was a gutless display by Celtic. The midfield especially seemed to be second best to everything save for the occasional spells. Samaras seems to be getting it tight but I thought Hooper was far worse and neither got any decent service anyway. Wholeheartedly agree that everything just seemed to go wrong when Brown went off. He didn't look fit in the first place. He's probably our most important player now. I'm glad that the only derby game left is the SPL fixture. The players should be taking note of the severe gloating coming from the Rangers camp and ensure a performance like yesterday's is not repeated at Ibrox.
The pitch didn't help us, it's no coincidence that our two worst performances in the last 3 months have been on two atrocious pitches. Other than that it was simple, we had no central defenders. All Rangers had to do was hoof it in the box and we shat it, there was no confidence in the back being able to hold it's own which meant we had to sit much deeper than we did with big Maj in the center. It was more even than the last few Old Firm games and Rangers deserved to win it because their tactics worked, they knew we had no central defence and they exploited it well. Apart from that is is still very evident that we have much better footballers on the pitch, get our central defence sorted (or at least get big Danny back in) and we close the only loophole they had.
Since Hooper got called up the England Under 21 squad he's been off the boil. Needs to get his head sorted.
I agree with most of what ST says but I also agree with Mick, the pitch was shocking, that was the leveller. I cannot think of a reason why Celtic would think umpteen hopeless long balls hoofed up the park would work? I don't recall us doing that recently and it was bizarre to see us resort to it and my thought is that maybe the management thought passing football would not work on that surface. Not an excuse the better team won on the day but that was as poor as I have seen us for a while. Most of the team simply did not show up.
As said above we just couldnt get going. Dunno if its the pitch or in their mentality but it simply wasnt good enough. We should be good enought ot play better football. In scotland the pitches arent always going to be in top condition. We should play a team to cope with that. Commons was a wasted jersey as a result. Shoudl have had wee forrest on the bench yesterday. Their biggest weakness is lack of pace at the back and not once did we test this bar Izzy. We should have also not given Samaras a new deal until the season was over- or at least nog until today!! The hunger and desire we've seen a lot wasnt there and to be fair to Rangers they had it in abundance! They won every 50/50 and every player on their side got pass marks. They deserved their win. How both sides react in the coming 2 -3 weeks will determine the title too!
Think it fell apart when they brought Weiss on...no answer to his pace. Defo missed big Dan...he was needed to deal with Jelavic who was a handful (in case anybbody forget him with Rapid Vienna) It had to happen...Rangers couldn't go on being pish in OF games. The last league one will be intresting. Stokes and Hooper must be played up front...Rangers now switched onto the Samaras tactic.
the Huns got their matchups right. We couldn't get our key plaayers into the game & i think maybe the Huns deserve some credit for that. The fast, flowing football we can play wasn't possible on the bumpy pitch. In games like that, we have to find another way and we didn't even try to change it up. Hooper hasn't looked sharp since the partnership with Stokes was broken up. stokes isn't the greatest player in the world, but he scores goals and he is a far better foil that Sammy
