SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

Dunno about you,but I’ve certainly spent more enjoyable Sunday afternoons. Oh yeah,it was fairly relaxing,I didn’t exactly break sweat. The problem is that neither did any of our players. We have seen many performances this season which have been on a par with the lows of the Mowbray or Macari eras,but yesterday really was abysmal.

There was not a single player on that pitch who deserves pass marks,that is how bad we were. We had a striker who has forgotten how to put his foot on the ball or through it,a midfield who have forgotten how to create or destroy,and a defence who get ripped on the flanks and hammered in the middle. You won’t win many prizes with that to rely on. In a game which held out to us and the players one last chance of redemption in this truly woeful season,we quite simply didn’t turn up.

That is criminal. It is unprofessional. It shames the players and their “professionalism” and it certainly shames the statement made by the great Jock Stein which currently adorns the background of these pages. Inferior players? Don’t even start me.

It took us until halfway through the first half to even get a glimmer of hope by virtue of a few attacking flurries,by which time we were already a goal down. Their response was a simple burst up the park,down our left and leaving Laxalt in shreds. Two-nil and game over.

At that stage,looking at the possibility of substitutions to perk up our display a little,our biggest problem was that we weren’t allowed to make eleven of them! No-one could really have complained if he had got the tug at half time. As it was,Greg Taylor came on for Laxalt-who had been having easily his worst game for us. He was an improvement,to be fair. Still pish though. The biggest mystery for most of us by this stage was why Christie was still on the park-or even getting a game at all,given his performances and his attitude for so much of this season. He finally got hooked,and frankly I hope I never see him in a Celtic strip again. For someone who is such a big hit for himself,I suspect he is in for a rude awakening at the clamour for his services in the summer. He believes he is better than us,deserves more recognition,more money,a better club.

Don’t let the door hit yer arse on the way out,son. You had a good six months in our Treble Treble season and that’s about it. Beat it.

Eddie has been abysmal this season and I suspect that he may well find himself in a similar situation to Christie where he has to sign a contract somewhere to rebuild a tarnished reputation,rather than a bumper one built on the reputation he has built up. It is no use being a superstar when the going is good,not when you don’t have the mettle to get down and dirty when the going gets tough. Far too many of our players this season have decided that when the going gets tough,they are gonna GTF. That is unacceptable at any club,it is certainly not an option at ours. Yet sadly it is clearly the new normal.

John Kennedy said during the week leading into the match that Celtic were still a better team than the huns,runaway winners of the league. The best team in the country,he said.

We saw the evidence laid bare before us yesterday. We are currently miles behind this mob. They have a belief which we no longer have,and the shape and discipline that we have been missing for years now. They have players in every position who are generally little more than journeymen-but they are journeymen who know what they have to do once they are on the pitch. They are,in short,a cohesive unit. We are like a jigsaw puzzle,and sadly with blind men trying to put us together. We already knew the rebuilding job over the summer-and probably the two windows after it-was going to be enormous. On yesterday’s performance I honestly wonder if there is anything there to build from.

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Above article by BMCUWP