On the long walk along London Road after the game on Saturday I overhead, “Any manager playing one up front clearly doesn’t have confidence in his team”. I hear variations on this quite often. It’s not true. In fact, I watched the hot favourites for the England and Wales (see what I did there) Premier League beat their main rivals with this formation last night.
Playing one up front can be as much of an attacking formation as playing two, or even three strikers. Any formation, 4 -2-3-1, 4-4-2 or 3-5-2 is not in itself overtly attacking or defensive. Even the often ridiculed 4-6-0 can be expansive.
There are a few ways to score goals. Martin O’Neill’s Celtic mastered the set-piece. For a period, a considerable percentage of our goals came either this way, or from cross balls. There’s also the classic long ball to a ‘big one up front’ who can knock it down to a penalty box poacher. Both these plays exploit the advantages of direct play, which in itself can break packed defences.
The modern game increasingly relies on alternatives, specifically creating space and movement. Don’t crowd the box, drag defenders out to allow pacey support players to break beyond them. At the very elite level, one of the game’s greatest ever goal-scorers, Christiano Ronaldo, exploits this space magnificently from the wings. Our own top striker, Leigh Griffiths, played a similar role before being handed the No. 9 role at Celtic. I suspect his best position isn’t, in fact, as a No. 9.
We need many things at Celtic, most specifically a defensive mid (another formation story), but we don’t need to revert to a 4-4-2. We need players who understand the importance of space in the final third, and who can exploit it.
Ronny has recruited a flood of wide players since arriving 18 months ago with very little success. Which has had an acute cost.
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I believe we should be willing to switch formation to suit the opponent
Disgraceful petition about RD.Are we becoming Huns?.I believe he has not really delivered on what he set out to do.High pressing,good passing,fluent attacking football.If this is down to the players not being able to do these things,then he should have dropped them.I think this has been his undoing.This weeks game is massive for RD.I really do feel sorry for him.
The Battered Bunnet on 22nd December 2015 2:52 pm
Watford front two cost £500k in total. Good scouting.
Vardy only cost Leicester £1m. Again, good scouting.
Gary
Clearly I’ll need to improve my comedy routines.
TBB
Nah, I’m just a bit slow ;-)
It did get me thinking how much we have wasted (circa £10m on Bangura, Balde, Pukki, Scepovic, Ciftci) then you look at Deeney and Ighalo being picked up for a pittance.
Ciftci could be our Vardy if we played 4 – 4 -2
DontChaKnow csc
More seriously…
I don’t want Ronny to go.
And I don’t want Ronny to stay.
I want Ronny to improve.
Evidence to date suggests that he ay have ‘borrowed’ his approach to the game from elsewhere rather than figured it out for himself. The lack of original thinking becomes apparent when appearing unable to figure out what to do when it doesn’t work, or even the precursor to that, figuring out why it isn’t working in the first place.
Ronny’s team’s ape the so-called GegenPressing game that developed in recent years in Germany, but in Ronny’s version, it all too often looks like IngenuePressing, which for those of us watching on, quickly becomes simple DePressing.
Apparently Michal Zyro is being linked to Wolves for £350,000. Surely that would be a no-brainer for us at that price (his contract is out in the summer).
Agree the petition to have Ronnie sacked is well out of order, that’s my view today. However IF Aberdeen win their game on Saturday to go top of the League and IF we get gubbed at Tynecastle on the Sunday – enabling them to stay there going into 2016 – my view on the petition wont have changed. But for sure I’ll have lost all confidence in Ronnie’s ability to retain the league title, more so when he insists on writing Aberdeen’s pre-match team talk by continuing to dismiss them as title contenders.
tet
he must have some say in who is singed.
:-) So Auldheids integrity is called into question……incredible……i mean what will the tooth gnashing hun do…
it calls into question the whole use of a blog to dupe us…… i mean you could have told us……
ye were chased by the polis playin fitba in the street as a bhoy!!
hahahahahahah from a weekends lurkin that made the tea jitter in me nostrils.
:-)
HH
Yo ho ho- McLean and Collum get #Celtic festive fixtures https://t.co/oylG0w7KzB @videocelts
” Steven McLean and Willie Collum grab the Celtic festive fixtures, as the SFA and Aberdeen pile pressure on Ronny ”
SMSM csc
bournesouprecipe
Weren’t we linked with Vardy? Pooh poohed as a lack of ambition??
TBB 2.34
Just what I was thinking. (The bit at the end about leaving acres of space to be picked off in).
A shameless repost from the last thread.
This one deserves a wider audience.
Calm, measured, sensible, non hysterical and written by a Celtic supporter.
Post of the week for me!
BigChipsUK – 10 in a row (2001-2010)
on 22nd December 2015 1:01 pm
Just a quick hit and run (partly coz I’m at work and partly to avoid the inevitable abuse/flack)…
This irrational crusade to drive RD out of our club (“more than a club my erse!) is utterly pointless. No manager with any pedigree will come to manage a team in a third rate league (even a team virtually guaranteed to win it every year).
And do the RD dissenters think that they are making the position appear more attractive to prospective future post-holders with the endless tirade of vitriol against the present incumbent, in spite of the fact that he is as successful domestically as any other manager we have had in modern times?
Ah, but I miss the point, the Celtic manager is not judged on domestic performance, as Celtic are expected to win the treble any year, and any less is deemed a failure (by the deluded). In order to be regarded as a success, a Celtic manager must put out a team who can qualify for the Champions League every season, and even get through the group stage and into the last 16, with players whose competitive spirit, tenacity, tactical awareness, speed of thought and execution, ball control and accuracy of distribution are honed week in and out against the likes of Ross County, St Johnstone and Kilmarnock.
Do the dissenters not realise that the problem is in the lack of competition faced every week domestically, rather than because the manager is no good? It doesn’t matter who we get in (of those that are available and would actually come), the background to our present situation would not have changed, and it is unlikely that the outcomes would significantly change as a result.
What would give more chance of a significant improvement in our European performances and results would be more competition in the domestic environment. Not necessarily a certain club eventually coming back to a level where we can have a two horse race each year, but more one where we can have a real and sustained challenge on a number of fronts, from the likes of Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibs, Dundee United, Motherwell, ICT, and dare I say, eventually them. Paradoxically, being guaranteed domestic success every year pretty much guarantees a lack of European success (even by our own limited definition thereof), whilst NOT being guaranteed domestic success due to a more competitive environment in Scotland would likely deliver a team more capable of achieving European successes if and when they actually qualify.
And therein lies the other stark fact for those who discount RD’s domestic success. You have to be successful domestically to even get a shot at the European competitions. So our team has to be jusged on its domestic achievements before we can even think about European success. And turning the ship upside down every 2-3 years for yet another rebuild is not going to give us the stability to deliver that.
Be careful what you wish for…
Coolmoore Mafia (previous blog)
The story is still unfolding and one chapter in that story would be Scottish society’s unwillingness to look at itself in the mirror.
I’m not sure if UEFA would of itself bring that about but it would be another factor that makes it more difficult for the denial to continue.
In June 2013 Charlotte Fakeovers started to leak information that was quickly buried under the excuse of its provenance, that is was it legally obtained.
In any society but here the answer to that would be ” who gaf what is the material telling us?”
Provenance is still being used as cover and indeed was a hurdle Res12 had to leap before we could put the SFA on the spot.
More than that, extensive efforts have been made to serve up that evidence on a plate to media outlets in Scotland and England and still they remain silent.
One of the questions in the chapter has to be why? If a person is as sick as they are secret so too is a society and ours, based on what the last 15 years tell us, is extremely ill.
– See more at: http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/aberdeen-fans-grasping-financial-fundamentals/comment-page-16/#comment-2741966
BigChips
That wiz ma longest post fur ages!
Tim Horton
There’s a few on here I’d like to singe!!
:-)
Timhorton
Out of the first team he didn’t sign……
Craig Gordon
Michael Lustig
Scott Brown
Nir Biton
James Forrest
Tom Rogic
Calum Mc Gregor
Izzy
Charlie Mulgrew
Kris Commons
Joe Hansen
Anto Stokes
Leigh Griffiths
A fair skelp of the first team he didn’t sign.
When you look at those he is supposed to have signed, I’m at a loss why he doesn’t play them more,as if I were a coach and had chosen players to fit into my team, I would play them.
I am not saying he doesn’t have any input, but what I reckon happens is he is given a choice between player A,B,C etc and he chooses out of what he is offered, I don’t think he has any material role in scouting them.
If he did with the likes of Scott Allan, Stewart Armstrong, the boy Christe, GMS fair enough, but the likes of Cifcti and Carlton Cole, why on earth would he sign players that don’t or never will fit into his system.
Just my humble opinion.
HH
Starry Plough
We were linked to Vardy a few seasons back, think around the time we signed Hooper
Gerryfaethebrig
Aye I thought so Gerry:))
Sack everybody:))
We were linked with Vardy and Charlie Austin – both derided as projects and not CL class.
philbhoyon
yep should be signed,to many singers on here.
philbhoyon= philbhoy.
Timhorton
I missed out the defence, well I didn’t it got lost in the copy.
The likes of Jozo, Boyata, Janko, Blackett fit the prospect policy, so I would imagine he didn’t have too much input there.
HH
There are two lessons to come from that petition.
1. If you are going to fire an idea out into the world like an archer with a bow and arrow be sure the arrow shaft is straight and not curved. If it’s curved it’s not an arrow
IT’S A BOOMERANG STUPID.
2. There are msm outlets out there only too keen to watch for boomerangs and use them but dodge the arrows aimed at them.
Generally social media is not representative of general thinking but it produces fertile soil for mad ideas to take root as much if not more than rational ones.
So that we get the wheat amongst the weeds rather than the weeds amongst the wheat.
TIMHORTON
I knew what you meant………….each time!
Take care!
“Ronny has recruited a flood of wide players since arriving 18 months ago with very little success. Which has had an acute cost.”
If Ronny cant buy players to suit his style of play, despite trying over & over to do so then he’s the problem. At some point he must realise 4-2-3-1 isn’t working with the players at his disposal & find a way that suits better. As his unwilligness or inhability to do so is likely to cost him the job.
THE EXILED TIM on 22nd December 2015 3:33 pm
My theory about Cole, which I’ve just thought up is this…
Stokes had become persona non grata but RD said he really needed an extra body up front. Preferably one that offered a different style of play. Problem was that since the window had shut it needed to be somebody out of contract. Wouldn’t surprise me if Cole was the best available.
The domestic standard of the opposition didn´t seem to affect MON, WGS and NL and that was with Rangers in the league. For me that is a hun argument and Walter Smith was the parent of that particular argument.
Europe is the only place where we can make a profit. So it is VITAL!!!
Our domestic spend compared to our domestic arrivals dwarfs them considerably. So is being one point clear at Christmas reasonable ? In fact many have pointed out that our spend dwarfs some of our European conquerors. So is that acceptable ? Are Malmo facing better opposition than us every week ? I dont think so.
Some fans want Ronny to learn and learn quick. Some fans say Celtic is too big a club for an apprenticeship ..and he has been in the job 20 months.
And wasn´t it Peter Lawwell that claimed that the shelf life of an Old Firm manager is 4 years. Certainly been the case since Peter has been at the helm.
I say it does not matter given RD remit. I also reckon the plc think that also. I feel sorry for him for sure. He has been promoted to a position that is way beyond his abilities.
HH
starry
Well, he won’t be linked again anytime soon thats for sure.
Tim Malone Will Tell
Cheers, was sitting trying to think who the other multi million EPL striker was we were linked, it was Charlie Austin……
Man U having a meeting discussing LVG’s job, any word on what Peter & Desmond had for lunch
Regardless of systems – if players are so inconsistent and do not play to their potential, we will continue to stutter and lose a good number of games.
Why are they so inconsistent?
We have ‘dodged the bullet’ in the last two games – we could have lost both.
Petition on Ronny is bullshit.
I have little confidence in him and I see no ‘rhyme or reason’ to the digning policy and/or the make-up of the squad.
If we were moving in the right direction and making mistakes along the way, then I am sure we would all take it in our stride – however I see little evidence that this is the case.
I would love for the club and Ronny to prove all the doubters, including me, wrong, win a treble and qualify in July/Aug for the CL.
I would love the message to be: “we have done it our way – we know what’s best for our club, on and off the park”
But as I say, Ronny does not convince me!
THE EXILED TIM
Ronny Deila has the final say in all transfers.
Every manager has to inherit players. I have little sympathy.
Is this McLean 1st gig with Celtic since the semi final?
Awe_Naw_No_Annoni_Oan_Anaw_Noo on 22nd December 2015 3:44 pm
I think it was actually WGS that said made the lifespan comment.
Every team gets beaten by teams with hugely inferior budgets. Everywhere.
MON, WGS and NL all trotted out the excuse about standard of the SPL and then playing in Europe. It makes perfect sense really so don’t know why some have trouble believing it.
And wasn’t it Advocat while at the huns who said an old firm manager had a shelf life of 4 years??