SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all. 

Matchday 24 of our 38 game slog came and went without much fanfare,merely providing some more ammunition to torpedo Rentagob Martindale’s comments about being the most cost-effective manager in the league. Bang for buck? We all know the answer to that one.

I know. Cheap shot,like shooting fish in a barrel. But I still enjoyed it for that reason alone!

Celtic actually did their bit too,to be fair. (As did AWENAW,and if you read back to the comments from yesterday’s article,you will know what I mean.) Especially in the first half,where we were rapidly out of the traps and barely allowing the opposition to breathe,much less form any settled formation. Of course,that tends to be an easier task when said formation is pretty much 6-4-0,but they even struggled with that!

Celtic settled on our own preferred formation against such tactics,but did so with much more fluency across the front line. The mids weren’t merely passing it back and fro,but switching the play across and through. The ball could be winging itself forward to a wide player on the run-remember how much of a rarity that was?-or slammed through the defensive lines to a breaking Kyogo,Maeda or Jota. Sadly,Kyogo in particular had a tendency to be caught offside early on. But not when it mattered,oh no. 

With Walsh cast as the apron in the middle,we all knew that any of our forward forays would have to be squeaky clean. And even when they were,our first and third goals still took over four minutes between them to be confirmed. The second was either more clearcut or the words-onto plums here,sorry-came through sharpish,for it was a mere ninety seconds for the restart after this one. I dunno whether or not he has been caught on camera at his school workplace eating corned beef sarnies on a Friday.

You might think that,but I couldn’t possibly say so…

To the match itself-or more accurately,the first half. The second half can only be described as matching the weather on the night,with that unmistakably Scottish descriptive word dreich. Yes,we were swiftly out the traps,but we were actually creating few clearcut chances until the opener. And then we did it with a quick one-two either side of the half hour mark.

The first came just after Kyogo had split the defence wide open and laid it back across goal to Jota,but frustratingly just behind him. This time,Hatate gathered it on the left of the box and shifted it inside to Greg Taylor,who wasted no time in slamming it into the bottom corner. Goals still don’t come naturally to our most-improved player,but he is sure getting the hang of it! After VAR had done its bit to give the Livi players a chance to get their breath back,we knocked the stuffing right out of them. 

Again the chance was created from the left,saved from Kyogo and when the ball flashed across goal,it eventually found its way to the lurking Maeda. It wasn’t the easiest,it was difficult even to get a clean strike at all,but you wouldn’t know it from the way that he finished it off. It took us another quarter of an hour or so to finish the game off for good with probably the best goal of the night-and wouldn’t you know it,it came from a rare opposition foray up the park,right on half time. They rarely tried to be so adventurous in the second half,by the way!

Livi tried to dribble the ball past CalMac on the edge of our area,but he wasn’t for having it. He stuck a foot in,and Matt O’Riley threaded it through to Kyogo to shrug off his marker and dash in on goal. Now,the wee fella wasn’t having one of his better nights up till then,even if he was still a nightmare for the opposition. But he only had one thought on his mind here,straight in on goal. 

Clean through with the defence trailing in his wake,he calmly drew the keeper and stroked it past him to the same spot as GT had put it earlier. Three up just in time for the much-needed comfort of a warm and dry dressing room,and we could all pretty much relax.

It wouldn’t be fair to suggest that we relaxed too much during the break,but we did very little of note afterwards. Now,it has often been noted that our pitch is in a dreadful condition at the moment,and conditions were not conducive to any version of The Beautiful Game. We also fielded all five subs,but that is no rarity. Also Livingston made even less of an attempt than normal at adding to the spectacle. But to be honest,the second half was a damp squib. Not much helped by a flag-happy standside lino either,who somehow missed a lunge on a breaking Abada. Right in front of him,no free kick. Go figure. But it gave us more of a look at newbies Oh!!! and Iwata. 

A comfortable night then,unless you were actually in attendance. We move on to Perth on Sunday with continued momentum and a happy camp. We can’t ask for much more than this at the moment,can we?
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Above article by BMCUWP