where to now celtic?

 

The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

At the start of the season I said I would give Tony Mowbray at least a season before making a judgement. I have little time for the Real Madrid ‘win everything first time out the gate or beat it’ style of board room management. I find it repellent and one that tends to cause more harm than good. Vincent Del Bosque’s subsequent success compared to Real’s failure is proof enough of that.

Even though I’m writing this before the cup tie at kilmarnock, basically our season is at an end; the league is finished, Europe was humiliating, the League Cup was awful and even if the Scottish Cup is landed I believe Tony Mowbray’s position is unsustainable.

Any time I hear a plea for him to be given another season my automatic response is “To do what?”

Put bluntly, I haven’t seen anything to convince me that next season would differ in any significant way from this fiasco. But rather than go off on a rant about how useless this and that was I’ve tried to break it down into a few key areas where I think he’s failed and more importantly where I can’t see any signs of improvement.

In fact in most cases the opposite is true; the worse it gets the more convinced he seems to be that this is the way to go.

Pragmatism

Remember the first season Martin O’Neill was in charge?

In early November we were absolutely flying.Hearts came to Celtic Park, took a 1-0 lead and were promptly demolished 6-1. The following week we had two away fixtures: Rangers (3rd in the table) on the Sunday and Hibs (2nd) on the Wednesday. We went to Ibrox attempting to play the same way we had against Hearts and caught a 5-1 thumping. On the Wednesday we went out with the sole intention of not losing.

O’Neill had learned a lesson and, determined not to make the same mistake twice, we got a 0-0, won a point and the following Saturday got back to winning games.

That was the act of a manager who employed pragmatism, who realised that the way of playing that beat Hearts so convincingly at home doesn’t always work away from home so we have to be adaptable and able to alter the way we line up.

Currently we haven’t got a manager capable of doing that. What’s worse is that we knew that when we hired him.

When staring into the abyss of relegation last season he refused to alter the way West Brom played in order to simply gain more points. No, in his mind points had to be gained the right way. A bit like saying it’s not good driving to brake suddenly regardless of what’s just appeared in front of the car.

You don’t win leagues like that. When Celtic clinched the league in 2004 we did it at Rugby Park with a 1-0 win that was more of a battle than anything else. There wasn’t much flowing football on show. In my view, Tony Mowbray couldn’t send a team out clinch a league like that - he wouldn’t know where to start.

Mentality

Last season West Brom were praised for always trying to play the game ‘the right way’, always looking to entertain. It got them relegated with Tony Mowbray repeating like a mantra the sentence about not compromising his beliefs about how the game should be played.

We’ve heard a lot of that this season, normally after a bad result - which means we really have heard a LOT of that this season - and it always strikes me as a cop out and an extremely silly thing to say. The ability to defend well, to close a game out with a narrow lead, to install a mentality of success, is just as important as the ability to pass well and it is something we are incapable of at the moment.

The current Rangers team would fight to the death for Walter Smith. He’s taken the current dire situation at Ibrox and turned it into a team building asset in a way Celtic never could in the early 90s.

Look at our players when they run out the tunnel, they’re not exactly straining at leash to get going. They look as though our team talk involved a screening of Schindlers List.

So far this season we’ve managed two goals in the opening 10 minutes of any game. On the other hand we’ve conceded loads during that time. We made it to November having scored first in only 2 of our 10 competitive home games. There’s no fire there.

Remember the last time we beat Rangers at Celtic Park? April 2008 3-2, Barry Robson and Paul Hartley tearing around like their lives depended on the win. I’m sure the current squad is capable of playing with that kind of passion, but somehow they’re emerging from the tunnel with their spirits all but crushed before a ball is kicked.

Substitutions

We’re 4-2 up with 17 minutes to go at Aberdeen. So far in the game we’ve managed to give away cheap goals only moments after we’ve taken the lead twice. The boss decides to make a substitution and bring on our new Korean midfielder, a creative type, not a tackler. I was thinking “That’ll be Kamara or McGeady going off. Neither has had a nightmare, but neither has played that well”.

No. Instead, BTM chose Landry N’Geumo, our midfield gate keeper and a guy who was having a better than decent game stopping the Aberdeen midfield. You could also argue that given the upheaval our central midfield has gone through recently, giving Brown and N’Geumo 90 minutes together would be a good thing in terms of forming a partnership.

Ki comes on and with extra space afforded to them in midfield Aberdeen duly take control of the game. Cue two more points sailing off.

And that wasn’t the first time something like that had happened either. I’m sure you could come up with a few that had you scratching your head in wonder; Niall McGinn at right back anyone? How about Scott Brown at left back?

I can’t believe his stock is high with the board or with Peter Lawell either. In fact the CEO would have a good case to want him removed on the basis of our result at Kilmarnock alone. Lawell delivers the biggest PR coup we’ve seen at Celtic probably since O’Neill and Sutton arrived, the support are fully galvanised, ready to really make something of the run in, fans in Ireland were no doubt thinking of buying up tickets to come over and see Keane help Celtic come back and win the league. It was an incredible 22 hours. All Tony Mowbray has to do is ensure that we take three points at a ground where Celtic haven’t lost in nine years and he couldn’t do it (see the last line of the pragmatism parargraph above). Unbelievable.

Lawell must have been ready to kill him after that game because we had just blown a huge amount of money on a dead rubber league run in. Who’s going to travel now to watch us play, effectively, a series of friendly games?

It’s time to face up to it; we have a busted flush on our hands and we have to take action.

Three years ago we had just taken Milan to extra-time in the last 16 of the Champions League, Milan went on to win the trophy, we probably gave them their hardest tie.

We’re now 13 points behind a team that hasn’t made a first team purchase for almost two full years and here’s the worst bit – I think our squad is stronger now!

All we need is guy who can organise and motivate them.

Any ideas?

AB MURDOCH