SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

I think the only thing that we can take from last night is a valuable point. We learned very little about our players on the night, for none of them were able to hit the heights that we know they are capable of, and we learned even less about which of the midfielders we have available is suitable for a preferred starting role. 

Even CalMac couldn’t get into his normal rhythm, and that he still made it into my three picks for the POTY Competition tells you how much below par we were. Yet overall I thought it was a decent watch,just without enough goal chances being created. A night for going-aw,damn-and kicking the cat. (It’s an expression,not an encouragement of animal cruelty.) Our manager stated after the match that he thought a lot of that was down to trying to make the killer pass too early. Well, he might be right, and he usually is. But the rest of our play was as dull as ditchwater, and usually ended with one of our players running up a blind alley, kicking it out of play, or simply passing it to an opponent. 

To pit it more plainly, Zagreb were a poor side who were there for the taking. And we couldn’t do it. We played against a Hibs side on Saturday who are bottom of the league, but they created more than the home side last night. If this is the team which has won eighteen of the last nineteen titles, I reckon that Hibs should apply for a transfer to it right speedily. You wouldn’t think it possible that a team could play as badly as they did, yet we were little better. As soon as the ball got anywhere near the danger zone, our creativity collapsed. 

On the one occasion that didn’t happen, a Zagreb defender nicked the ball from the waiting Idah to prevent a certain goal. That came about from possibly the only bit of magic we saw all night-a reverse pass from Forrest leading to an instant cutback from Engels for the tap-in for Idah. It happened right at the end of the game, and it would have been worth waiting for had it gone in. It didn’t, and overall it just summed up the night for us. We lacked the killer ball, and when we did find it, we found a defender doing what defenders do. The bastert. Heyho…

The referee mercifully only added three minutes to the allocated time, and left us to reflect on a point gained away from home or two points dropped against a poor opponent. I reckon they just dragged us down to their standard on the night, and we’ve seen that happen before to better teams than us. After all, their fans are probably wondering how a side as poor as us on the night can win twelve out of their last thirteen titles!

Two games left to go in the group, with Young Boys visiting us hoping to gain their first points of a miserable campaign for them before we visit Villa the following week. Villa are currently third in the table with thirteen points, while our nine points total so far sees us in nineteenth ahead of tonight’s final nine games of the round. I think it’s fair to say that the top eight finish is beyond us, and we now have to make sure that we get at least three points from those last two matches, and get to twelve points. As it is, there are only nine teams who cannot achieve the thirteen points which would put them above us. Two wins, three draws and only one defeat from six matches might look okay so far, but this is gonna be tighter than any of us would like. 

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Above article by BMCUWP