Celtic’s performance in Munich was one of the best in many years. Playing away from home against a top Champions League side, with a deficit to overcome, they came within seconds of securing a win, while creating several excellent chances.
Only two players dropped out of that side (Auston Trusty and Callum McGregor) from Sunday’s league game. Trusty was more than compensated for by Maik Nawrocki. McGregor was not replaced like-for-like by Luke McCowan, Arne Engels dropped to allow McCowan to take up a more advanced position, but this change in midfield did not determine the outcome.
Celtic’s tactical problem is how to progress the ball when everyone in the middle of the park is man-marked. It works against weaker teams, but well-drilled outfits who have as much athleticism as Celtic, like Newco, Brugge, Dinamo Zagreb or Young Boys have been able to give Celtic the ball and frustrate for long periods.
There are worse problems to have. Philippe Clement’s Achillies Heal was that he was unable to breakdown a packed defence full of lesser players. Being unable to overcome this cost him his job.
The league table reflects the true difference between Celtic and Newco. We are miles ahead of them, with better players and a better manager, but there is a gaping wound which has become more obvious with passing games and which others will pick away at.
The Champions League qualifier in August will be against a better opponent than we faced on Sunday. A tactical upgrade is required for then.
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It’s professionally humiliating for Brendan Rodgers to be out-thought by the former Kelty Hearts manager. But perhaps he’ll consider it worth it if Ferguson gets the permanent job.
Good article Paul, hopefully the squad will be bolstered by three or four by the qualifiers
what tactic did we employ against munich that differs from our normal game plan ?
Looking forward to Brendan winning the “ low key treble “
I’m afraid P67 is too emotionally involved to be able to take a step back.
Alan Morrison made the point in his podcast that these derbies have been nip and tuck for two years now.
Such is the difficulty in playing a side set up to go long and stop a football game breaking out.
Brugge, Zagreb and YB seen us take a win and two draws. That’s quite a good return for a club that have lost qualifiers against Malmo, Maribor,Cluj and Ferenchvaros in the last ten years.
when we scored in munich our possesion startedin our own box. and involvedpasses from full back and goalkeeper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNtkTOde2H4
BARROWFIELD UPDATE 13/03/25 & CELTIC PARK DRONE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgXT_f24Kc
Nawrocki did not more than compensate for Trusty. He may have defended well but, since he can’t play a forward pass with his left foot, he always passed to CCV thus giving the hun more time to close down or midfield. Schmeichel was reluctant to pass to Nawrocki, for the same reason, which resulted in those terrible chipped passes from him.
Trusty may be a big girl’s blouse but he can shift the ball forward with his left peg.
I really couldn’t care who the hun manager is.
Why should we, we are Celtic supporters. However to see a wee ned get the better of us in our own ground is not pleasing.
HH
Trusty wasn’t compensated by Nawrocki. He never progressed the ball down the left hand side. Always passing to Ccv. This left Jota and sclupp isolated and allowed the macro double up on McCowan and Kuhn.
I think we saw why Nawrocki is down the pecking order.
A defender who can defend but not a Celtic centreback that is used to build play. A classic example of summer 23 recruitments scattergun approach rather than recruitment to fit the needs of the team.
Good afternoon all from the Orchard Park, leafy Giffnock hamlet. You can never have enough good times. 👍
Still trying to justify the signing of Nawrocki who only played because two other were not available, he is not good enough at left centre back and is not an option there, it imbalances the team as does playing two left footed Centre halfs as we have had to do at times. He is also very slow.
Great article and agree completely with the inclusion of Brugge
Their tactics were spot on against us and I was very impressed with their manager
Not a brilliant team, though tactically well drilled
Bayern would’ve expected to beat us playing their game as they have better players. Newco aim to frustrate,
But remember Nawrocki was a Mark Lawwell signing…
Newco have figured us out.. let us have the ball, frustrate and press in the middle of the park, and hit on the counter. Bayern would’ve expected to win the game playing their own style, having better players. Our play has become too predictable and we seem incapable of adapting. We have speedsters in our frontline, so if we’re being pressed in the middle, hit the wings. Our CB’s look reluctant to dribble out into the middle and create the extra man. Quite easy fixes but it seems the players have been instructed to “stick to the gameplay”.
Their longest move against us consisted of four passes. It’s incredibly hard to counter such basic football. I would hate to see us get dragged into the football sewer to counter them, besides, they’d still likely be nip and tuck games.
Football has moved on in the last 10/15 years or so, in the EPL, every club plays out and builds up. Long gone are the days it was only an Arsenal or Man Utd way of playing.
If you want to sell players for twenty million, you won’t do it by having them kick and run in the big games.
Raskin did well for the Huns on Sunday but he’ll never get a Belgian call up because Belgium will never play like the Huns. No side in any top league will come in for him because they’ll see how the Huns play and conclude he won’t fit their model.
Turning the clock back 15 years is not how we should be responding to a narrow derby defeat.
The Huns will realise one day that their approach to football is fundamentally at odds with a player trading model.
Our next game is against hearts. The hun game is consigned to the bin. We will win the lot, they will win fook all.
Vale bhoy
Snap! lol
A few belated thoughts on Sunday, and tactical upgrades.
PS this also applied when we played Aberdeen at home in the 2:2 game.
1. Ange’s plan B, was to use plan A but with different players, and to a lesser extent BR is guilty of similar. This makes us very easy to scout and predict our patterns of play.
2. With the opposition adopting a relatively compact and high defensive line when we played from the back, there was a 20 yard gap between their defence and keeper. A simple ball over the top would have resulted in a straight race between our forwards and their keeper. There is only one winner in that race.
However the opposition showed our full backs to the outside and if either were two footed they could have checked inside and placed the ball over the top with their wrong foot – they couldn’t.
3. Nawrocki was ok, but he has no left foot and this was a hindrance, as he passed the ball back to CCV, and in turn, he became our playmaker. While CCV is a good player he isn’t Beckenbauer.
5. Finally Idah – he was poor, but as we saw in the cup final and at Villa l, his forte is in the box, so let’s get him in there and get early crosses.
My conclusion – let’s make ourselves less predicatable with the occasional ball over the top from the keeper and defenders, and do similar with long throws from keeper and outfield players.
So, we are big hitters cause we draw with a Bayern team, who were there for the taking, just like Aston Villa and we fkd that up as well, and in Croatia, one ball over the top and unplayable DM gets us the goal that puts us into the knock-out stages, from the EASIEST CL group we’ve ever had??
But, we didn’t do that. Why?
Manager with zero savvy? Bottle? Dizny want to play in a way that isn’t littered with Michael Angelo passes? Anti a high out ball? If so, what is the point in big tall high-tower Idah?
Where we badly managed by Rodgers in the EASIEST CL Group we’ll probably EVER have?
Is Rodgers getting away with murder cause Celtic fans are dim Timmy’s?
And if we’re not dim Timmy’s…were is the Avalanche of questions to Rodgers about being too precious to play a big high dirty evil HunUgly ball to DM, AI, whoever, to get us a Tony Watt breakaway goal which would have got us through?
If we’re Brazil 1970 cause we drew with a there to be took Bayern Munich, how good are wee Bawwy’s HunUgly victors from Sunday’s Shhhhh dim Timmy mugging personified?
What if other teams play like wee Bawwy’s Timmy Conquerors, and PC Plod are on message to screw up the Green Brigade’s entry into the stadium’s leaving us playing in silent boring as fk libraries?
Has Rodgers destroyed Callum with his stupid Brazil 1970 of the SPL run-run-run-run-run-run-run bs tactics?
If so, who will Rodgers destroy next? Dugs on the street are saying that Rodgers has already destroyed Kuhn, Kyogo, big Engels was pish on Saturday because Rodgers asked the wrong questions of him. Ah mean, Engels takes corners, free-kicks, penalties, now Callum’s job as well. ffs!
Ok I’ll ask it – Is Rodgers at Cellik cause big serious teams know that Rodgers will sooner or later get all of the playing squad out through injury?
Just like Ange at Spurs.
Does any PLC take Rodgers aside for a quiet word on any issue apart from NOT backing the Green Brigade when they’ve been done over?
Some will say that the PLC have never managed a team, true, but the PLC sign off on the new playing assets/machines that Rodgers runs into the ground and then asks for more so that he can break them as well…when does it stop?
If Callum is brought back too early who’s fault will that be?
Put another way, if Neil Lennon was the manager on Sunday, the wee hurty feelings rebels would be taking it in shifts to cry their eyes out in the car park demanding the sacking of Neil Lennon.
How many faces have Tims really got?
Raskin is in the current Belgian squad and is expected to make his debut this week. Arne Engels was left out when Garcia named his first selections.
Hoop hoop Hooray
Hahaha.
First form of defence … blame the opposition!,
Rangers have also been charged over objects thrown on Thursday but say their own players and staff were “targeted with missiles” during Sunday’s Old Firm derby win at Celtic Park.
An Dún on 19th March 2025 10:29 am
Listened to the excellent Alan Morrison this morning on the huddle breakdown. I know Alan posts on here so keep up the good work, Alan.
Alan described Nawrocki as a bottleneck for us in our attempts to play out – so everything went down the right side for almost all the first half.
In effect we halved the pitch for ourselves and starved Jota.
——
The above posted on previous thread.
I find it persuasive.
“Man likes something he agrees with” shocker.
I’d go further.
With more going down the right due to the Nawrocki “bottleneck” both AJ and CCV …
… to address increased traffic down their side with a bit more variety …
… gradually deviated from their standard set of starting positions and next movements ….
Which made the shape of the back four even more of a mess.
As for this article Paul?
Agree with some of it.
Disagree (quite strongly) with other.
If I may ….
“We are miles ahead of them, with better players and a better manager, but there is a gaping wound which has become more obvious with passing games and which others will pick away at”
Pretty much with you on this risk.
“Closing the gap” is easier if you focus on not one but two objectives.
1. You getting better
2. Them getting worse. .. in part by you showing other teams how to compete successfully against them.
We’ve seen this “blueprint” before with McLeish.
Big differences now though – we have far more money to spend than them. Refereeing bias is more difficult to get away with.
“The Champions League qualifier in August will be against a better opponent than we faced on Sunday. A tactical upgrade is required for then”
I absolutely do not believe this.
When it comes to football matters, IMHO
The club strategy is OK.
Brendan’s tactics are OK.
The culture needs upgraded.
(Action for Brendan. I doubt he’ll take it)
The hun players were not targeted by missiles till they decided it was a good idea to spray Celtic supporters with fluid and spit into the direction of spectators in the stands.
Statement sorted.
garygillespieshamstring on 19th March 2025 2:40 pm
Certainly something our board will not say……🤫
As Dr Pangloss said, “All’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds”.
It’s amusing how over a few days the narrative has shifted from the new year game being a freak result/outlier to it being incredibly hard to counter basic football.
For the life of me I can’t understand how so many can’t see (or are unwilling to see) we have an issue when playing against R2ngers or a decent team deploying a low block and man-marking our midfield.
As I said yesterday, we are in a race to figure out how to beat them before they figure out how to beat the cannon fodder. If they win the race, those who can’t see there’s an issue will be the one’s shouting loudest in 12 month’s time for the manager’s head.
Paul67
Au contraire,
Did the predictable front three turn out to be wrong if you’re hooking at half time, nearly every supporter would have started Jota Maeda Kuhn and hardly BR’s ‘fault’ for trusting his best players and a format that has gotten us through Atalanta Leipzig Brugge and Munich, not to mention the league cup and 13 points clear. Midfield was decimated without CalMac and the only option was McCowan, with nothing to backup, from the bench, zero midfielders.
Schmeichel, Carter-Vickers, Johnston, and Schlupp all had mares, not helped because Nawrocki only had eight minutes of football to his credit (and it showed) before being asked to play. Not a patch with the ball at his feet on Trusty or Scales even Dane Murray got a debut at Villa, before Nawrocki could be played.
The same players in a very similar if not identical 4-3-3 tactical format, will rock up at IBrokes to face real tactical genius plucked from nowhere.
Celtic beat them on the statement “draw” this time around.
Our statement was akin to one of these wee knives protagonists use in Crouching Tiger type movies.
Flick of the wrist, tiny swish of wind, hit its mark before anyone even saw it.
R2ngers, as usual, dragged out their howitzer and one of their heavy shells.
(If you’re looking for a cultural reference – try the Monty Python sketch about the big game hunter out hunting for fleas)
Back to basics .
What do you mean by “ The culture needs upgraded?”
TT
The statement from Sevco is typical of a response you would get from the KGB when it knows they been caught . Did Putin write it?
I remember a Celtic player (possibly Packie Bonner ?) saying big Billy used to get a couple of the bigger players to give him a hard time going for cross balls at training to prepare him for what he might face on a Saturday from the less cultured hun opponents.
Maybe BR might consider a bit of the same for Auston Trusty, as this seems to be the main flaw in his game.
Karl Starfeldt used to get the same criticism as Rocky, which is fair enough.
However we can’t continue to have to make a choice between a centre half who can be strong but has no left foot and a ball playing centre half who is easily pushed around.
We need to toughen up AT or get an upgrade in during the summer.
French press saying Kyogo available for €3.5 million in summer, a no brainer
They wont even have paid the 10m to us yet, wonder if big Matt would come on loan?
BACK TO BASICS – GLASS HALF FULL
Good points, LP I think many including myself should have cut CCV and AJ some slack.
” Gie ‘um the joab!”