Negatives out of the way first: we’re not good enough, this is a low achievement by a Celtic team who have reached a group stage. There’s no disputing that, but amid the predictable ‘Throw them all overboard’ reaction, I know I’m not the only one who is not panicking right now.
When I heard we were playing three wingers (Forrest, Mackay-Steven, McGregor) I anticipated a thrashing. Gordon Strachan would often drop all his craft players for the more industrial types in European football, with good reason.
As it turned out, we had the majority of the chances, and all the better ones, as we spent most of the second half pushing for a winner.
No arguments with Leigh Griffiths assessment immediately after the game, that was his worst performance in a Celtic shirt. Nor is there dispute in Ronny Deila’s retort that he’s scored plenty for us before and will continue to do so. Even the greats have days like that, including the Swede.
The midfield formation was fluid throughout the game. Tom Rogic initially played as a defensive mid, before moving in front of Stuart Armstrong (who moved everywhere) and Callum McGregor. The defensive mid role Rogic played isn’t one carried out by either Nir Bitton or Scott Brown. We’ve not had anyone in this role since the departure of Victor Wanyama (still pining) and it remains a large gap in the offering.
Lesson: we need a defensive mid. The deep lying playmaker + box-to-box player isn’t robust enough in Europe.
Callum McGregor carried possibly the lowest expectations of everyone in a Celtic shirt but he put in an excellent shift. His goal was outstanding, losing possession immediately before Ajax equalised took the shine off things a bit, but it was still a strong performance.
Do you know the last time McGregor started a game? October 2014. Under those circumstances that was a remarkable performance.
General consensus is that the defence played well. Kieran Tierney is as good a left back as we’ve had in years. Had he not gone off with an injury the result might have been different.
Jozo Simunovic is clearly out best central defender. I know I’m not setting the bar too high with that statement, but he’s a move in the right direction. He’s also young, still working on his fitness, and will continue to progress.
A week ago Celtic Underground’s Harry Brady suggested Dedryck Boyata plays better alongside Simunovic than without him. Dedryck still has a long way to go but the evidence suggests partnered with a game-reader like Jozo has helped him. Let’s see where he is at the end of the season.
And Craig Gordon? He could have stopped both Ajax goals. That’s not to say he was to blame for either, he wasn’t, but these were the kind of stops he was making in last season’s Europa League.
Ronny is 18 months into the job and has contributed to the situation we find ourselves in (tactical mistakes in both Molde games), but this is not the time to lurch off plan. We’re not good enough largely because we’ve recruited too few players since 2012 who have improved the team.
We need to continue to develop players like Tierney and we need to recruit better. Get this right in January, and again in the summer, and we will be vastly better. The alternative is likely to be to pick up a best from the SPFL pool, or someone from the English circuit who cannot get a better paid gig. And then it would take until November 2017 before we could assess them properly.
Return of the Bampots
Tonight, for one night onlyt, Phil Mac Giolla Bháin, John Fallon and myself are in the Hibs Club, Carfin, for a Q&A in aid of Mary’s Meals, with Phil Agnew hosting. The event starts at 7:30, £5 entry, can pay at the door.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
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JJHS
To talk about last nights game, and I posted early hours this morning
I thought GMS was creating and causing Ajax problems in the 2nd half, then Ronny took him off, no idea why
I see a lot saying Forrest is coming onto a good game, and yes better than he has been, but what is he creating ?
Far to often last night we stood 10-15 yards off Ajax and let them play,
When in possession we are poor, some better player movement last night so there’s a positive :-)
I do not agree we are playing better football, did you watch us on Saturday against Killie, no idea how to break down a team
Sorry but for me, Ronny has not taken us 1 inch forward, so do not agree with your comments
Hail Hail
And the snakes in reply:
“Are we there yet,Paddy?’
What St Paddy said to the snakes?
Go home ya huns.
Get the rebs oan driver
ElDiegoBhoy
Not steamin’ then or now.
Daft, blind rocket though soamur!
Ask cowiebhoy!
;-)
HH jamesgang
Cowiebhoy
Lovely gesture, but you ghuys are making us proud over there
keep on keeping on and when you give us a visit you know you
have digs here.
H.H Mick
What did Paddy say to the snakes.
Awe naw no an adder anaw noo.
H.H Mick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHl53basSRc
Peacemaker.
Get yer asp ootta here?
Mon tae………..python?
Melbourne Mick
Not meaning to alarm you but cowiebhoy has set up a stall at cqn corner selling dogs at your gaff like it’s a timeshare!!!
There’s pure hunners o weedgies signed up already for the Glasgow Fair!
;-)
HH jamesgang
Dogs!!!!!!
Digs even. Pesky iphone!
Good evening my fellow Celtic supporters, or what’s left of us after the booing and scarf throwers last night. Good bye glory hunters, see you next time we in the K O stages of the C L.
Can I ask somethin.. does anyone on here regularly troll any of the sevco follow follow marching parades sites? Just wondering, that apart from the racial and religious bile they believe in and stand for.. is there ever any criticism of their team, manager or board on the scale of us.?
I know they swear an oath and follow follow up to their knees, but do they ever publicly put their own kind down?
We actively do it on a nightly basis, and it ‘seems’ to be the majority.
Mibbie i’m wrong, but we and Scottish football have a civil war to win, and we are hell bent on dividing our own side and providing ammunition for our enemies.
Hail Hail to anyone still out there.
Bad news the fukin Guinness was fukin full price.
I would have thought that on this black day I would have got a discount.
Good news though is am still discounted oot ma skull.
Channelisland Celt I was drummore road and left stpius in 1984 too.
Jamesgang
Its like a timeshare already lol
the more the merrier free entry if you wear the hoops.
H.H Mick
awe well down to 3 L.M .S.
GOOD LUCK BHOYS
Drum Bhoys aw ower the camp :-)
st patrick to snakes
you garter get outa this place
how about a bit of Nina Simone for a Friday evening?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1VrzT6RrQ
Melbourne Mick on 27th November 2015 8:57 pm
HH
Hope you have a great day and keep spreading the word.
Its a wonderful thing that you and the rest of the Bhoys and Ghirls do for others.
KTF
Melbourne Mick
Any Fhriend of cowiebhoy’s is like a patron saint for us fellow roasters!
You’d not be rushing over here tonight. 4 degrees and sleet a wee while ago.
HH jamesgang
DD Won’t pay for Ryan Air?
Just noticed, another 2 fallers in last mhan standing :-)
Big J you Goan tae the dugs our the digs for Easter yabigwalloper
All in the game
http://youtu.be/Gtizr2G_7Bk
HH
Is it just me.
Craig Gordon has been piss this season, looking nervous as bag of cats.
A few weeks back people were saying it was the defenders in front of him.
Thought he was poor for the two goals last night????
HH
Sometimes ye can get a wee message from someone unexpectedly and it really fills yer heart with joy.
That’s what being a Celtic supporter is all about. The people ye meet and the connections ye make.
We’re no a bad bunch at aw. God Bless us.
When’s the quiz start?
weet …. great song…. if you like that one, you probably love this one … one of my all time favourites ..
people get ready …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l04yM7-BWbg
mellow tonight …
https://youtu.be/nYv3IxJKRN4
I’m off lads…. have a good Friday evening.
HH
Parental advisory
Do they owe us a living?
http://youtu.be/Srkm5oWFwiQ
Looks like the Tradamus Lampada FP was hung out to dry by the speculative society.
The greedy incompetents who brought down Britain’s banking industry have walked away Scot free.
They have been hampered only by their boots over-flowing with golden goodbyes.
They are now working in new highly salaried posts or living in luxury with company pensions beyond the dreams of avarice.
Meanwhile, Dumbarton man Peter Cummings has been fined £500,000 and banned from working in the City of London by the Financial Services Authority.
QC Andrew Green, in a report published on Thursday, has now made it clear that Cummings was a scapegoat who was stitched up by his establishment colleagues to take all of the blame.
That he was comprehensively hung out to dry is also revealed in HUBRIS: How HBOS wrecked the Best Bank in Britain, by Ray Perman, a Scottish financial journalist.
Published by Birlinn, of Edinburgh, this book is not what you might call happy reading or a pleasurable stocking filler – but it’s going to be a best-seller again this Christmas.
That is because a long-awaited QC’s report has revealed that the failure of the FSA to target anyone but Peter Cummings was wrong.
Green’s findings make it plain that the FSA failed to cast its net wider and that the City should consider pursuing and banning ten of Cummings’ former colleagues on the HBOS board.
It is clear from Green’s report that the HBOS enforcement policy for borrowers to keep up their payments was botched.
And that the chief executive Andy Hornby and the chairman Lord Stevenson were not questioned closely enough about events at the bank.
A City insider told me: “It is a scandal that Peter Cummings is the only person who had to pay a fine. None of the others will suffer any financial penalty. This is because they and their lawyers spun this out for months on end until a legal time bar on the financial penalty aspect came into play. They delayed the report for 16 months.”
The Perman book reveals that Cummings was a man under exceptional pressure at HBOS.
And that he was leant on hard by Hornby and others to boost his profits and increase the amount of money he was lending to businesses at a time when the economy was going through the floor.
Peter Cummings wasn’t just leant on, he was attacked physically at one point.
According to financial journalist Ian Fraser he was forced to fend off an assault from a senior colleague who attempted to throttle him.
This was when he refused to lend even more money to “property developers and other flaky corporate borrowers, who by that stage were already toiling under collapsing asset values and intolerable debt burdens”.
This meant they were therefore even less likely to repay their loans than those people he had lent to in 2007.
Peter Cummings may have been greedy, and he may have been under pressure, and he was unquestionably unwise not to have walked out and told the bank to stuff its job, but was he bullied?
We know from his involvement in the community in Dumbarton, where he was brought up in Brucehill and where he has contributed a great deal of time and money to charity projects in the area – and a school in Africa – that he is not a bad person.
Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but what would we have done had we been in his place?
Would we have walked out on a seven figure package of salary and bonuses and foreign holidays and sunshine breaks with millionaires on their luxury yachts in the Maldives and Monaco?
Or would we have hung on in there in the hope that fortunes would change and everything would come right in the end?
Peter Cummings was ill for a time after the banking crisis, which is not surprising given the pressure he was under with one inquiry after another hanging over him.
He was also the target for a blast of public opprobrium and media criticism.
He worked in HBOS for 36 years, having started out making tea in the Bank of Scotland in Dumbarton High Street, but he was not one of the establishment elite who look after their own.
Cummings himself has said: “Many people must bear collective responsibility for what happened, including governments and regulators as well as the boards of the banks themselves. But the fact that I am the only individual from HBOS to face investigation defies comprehension.
“I have been singled out and subjected to an extraordinary Orwellian process by an organisation that acts as lawmaker, judge, jury, appeal court and executioner. The FSA has never had to prove its case to anyone other than itself, and sits safe in the knowledge that few individuals can afford to take it on.
“The decision to single me out for investigation is even more grotesque given that even the FSA has to admit in its notice that other senior people were involved in the critical decisions for which I am taken to task. This is tokenism at its most sinister, and has made it feel throughout like institutional oppression.”
He added that many people in high places in HBOS had not even been interviewed by the FSA and that when he was appointed to run the corporate division in 2006 he took strenuous efforts to improve risk controls, including the appointment of a chief risk officer.
“I cannot reconcile the close engagement I had with the FSA then with the criticisms they level against me, other than with their application of lavish portions of hindsight,” he said.
On close reading of the Green Report and the Perman book, many people will agree with him.
Cowiebhoy
;-)))
HH jamesgang
Shocking images of the Hoops bar being attacked last night. It would appear that the Police motto ‘to protect and serve’ does not apply to Celtic supporters. An Ajax fan who was arrested for assaulting a police officer and found in possession of cocaine was given a £500 fine. I doubt the same leniency would be applied to Celtic supporters who are getting heavier sentences for singing songs.
Gordon64
I heard earlier the barman got glassed?
Fabulous intelligence from plod. The usual mini-bus of them sat outside Barrowfield at the time.
Night night bhoys
Mon the hoops
ST. Patrick to snakes
“Fangs but no fangs…………………………………….?